The Mother of an African American Son

With the whole divide, anger, and just overall emotions swarming the Trayvon Martin Case, I have remained silent and a bit of a recluse if you will. Why? Truthfully, I don't like engaging in conversation that is divisive. I hate rhetoric that doesn't lead to solutions or in this case rhetoric that will lead to further division. I honestly have very mixed emotions about the race issues in this country; emotions that in moments such as the Trayvon Martin incident only become more confused and muddled. I usually shrug my shoulders and continue in the thought that the best way for me to fight these types of racial issues is to continue to be the best person that I can be and to embrace all God's people with love and compassion. I still stand by that but today as I listen more and more to the language and the thoughts and beliefs of people surrounding this case, I find myself thinking about my almost two year old son.

I must say I have been angered and saddened by the fact that our nation can't hear past some of the noise in this case and connect with the fact that one a young man died and two he did so because of the actions of someone else. I can't understand for the life of me why it's ok to say that George Zimmerman overacted or was maybe too ambitious but it's not his fault that a young boy is dead. I would hate to think that one day something I do, even if it is well intentioned, leads to the death of an innocent person. I also can't understand why George Zimmerman has the right to defend himself if threatened or attacked but Trayvon Martin doesn't have the same right. It pains me to hear people refer to Trayvon Martin as a thug. When I hear the word thug I think of someone in a gang, a drug dealer, a menace to society, someone that has a criminal record. None of these things were true of Tryavon Martin so why is he a thug? It disorients me to hear that George Zimmerman was a racist. I don't believe this to be true either. I do believe that he racially profiled Trayvon Martin but I believe he did so because according to what he understood there were young black men allegedly breaking into homes in his neighborhood. I do also believe prejudice played a part but not racism. These two things are very different to me; prejudice and racism. I believe the jurors had some prejudices. To hear the juror say that Ms. Jaentel wasn't creditable because of poor communication skills and poor education is sad to me. Does this mean an autistic child isn't creditable? A known charlatan, liar, or thief isn't creditable. Someone with a poor education can be very creditable to me.

These things trouble me deeply because I have an African American son. It hurts me deeply to think that I will one day have to explain to him that he will be judged not because of the content of his character or because of his actions but because of the color of his skin. Let's be even deeper, because of the amount of melanin in his skin. It pains me deeply to think that my son could be innocently walking home one day, make the mistake that a lot of children make and cut through a backyard (the kids in my neighborhood cut through mine all the time since the bus lets off right behind my house), be viewed as suspicious, feel threatened so he attacks his attacker first (if this is how you believe it happened), begins to win the fight against his attacker, and then end up dead on a sidewalk. I can't describe to you how my hand is shaking as I type and my heart is racing. But what frightens me even more is that the community of people that I work so hard to connect with, will not be able to see past the race and how they feel about which stories receive media attention, and how black people kill black people every day but want to holler the race card in any other incident. They can't see past this to connect to the human tragedy of the story then work together to make sure that something doesn't happen like this ever again-for both the Trayvons and Zimmermans sake. None of us really know what happened. We are all trying to piece together the evidence and let's be honest we will all do so from different perspectives. Why? Because we will each relate to a part of the story and the evidence based on our own experiences. That's why the verdict isn't what angers me. What anger me are my peers and the language I've heard from EVERYONE-white, black, grey, yellow, tan-surrounding this tragedy.

I want to be able to tell my son that the world can be a scary place but the people in it are working every day to change. I want to tell my son that as long as he does what is right he will always win. I want to tell him that he can trust his fellow man. I want to say these things to him and they be true. More importantly I just want to be the mother of a son. But it's times like this that I realize the world in which I live won't let me remove that descriptor African American. Why? Because it can't seem to stop making race an issue.