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Trayvon Martin, Paula Deen, SCOTUS: The trifecta of our unease with race

When I was an adolescent my mother once told me that when she was dating my dad in the early 1970s, the two of them would take walks in downtown Pensacola, near her childhood home in East Hill.

My parents, who are no longer married, were high school sweethearts, and I can only imagine how absorbed they were in each other. I think you can see it in the photo here.

But whatever the context of that conversation with her – and I cannot remember how old I was – it didn’t go in the direction I expected.

My mother told me that shopkeepers would see them coming and quickly pull the shades down and lock their front doors, flipping a “Closed” sign around with a snap.

The Panhandle shared many things with the broader South, as it does now, including more than a little bigotry and racism against people of color. But it never occurred to me that it happened to anyone I love.

My mother, who is of Spanish and German descent, is very dark skinned – a Phylicia Rashad doppelganger. She is darker than some black people I know. And she is beautiful.

My dad, on the other hand, has blond hair and blue eyes, which you can see in my middle daughter, who inherited from my dad the curious way her eyes turn green when she’s tired or excited.

Those racist shopkeepers thought she was a black girl holding hands with a white boy, and they didn’t want anything to do with that sort of thing.

To this day, my mother is asked for identification almost every time she buys something at a store with a debit or credit card. I know this because I’ve been there. I, on the other hand, am almost never asked.

I can pass, as they say.

I don’t know what it’s like to be greeted by the world everywhere you turn with suspicion and disdain before you even open your mouth. I’ve been asked a few times by ignorant people, “What are you?,” but that is not even close to the same.

The expected verdict in the Trayvon Martin murder case completes the trifecta of three very high-profile events this summer that revolve around the issue of race, and how we feel about it as a country.

Earlier this summer, the US Supreme Court ruled that it was no longer necessary for counties who plan to make changes in their election procedures to check in with the federal government to ensure they were complying with the Voting Rights Act.

Civil Rights advocates howled, while other people across the country danced a jig that we had finally overcome racial stereotypes in this country. We have not.

Unless you have been on the moon the past few weeks, you also know very well all about the unfortunate statements made by celebrity cook Paula Deen almost 30 years ago, and her nostalgia for the good ol’ Southern days of slavery.

How quaint those days must have been, indeed.

This country has reacted with unease to both of these events. Some white folks have over-apologized for what Deen said, out of complete sincerity or out of guilt for what their brethren have committed against other races. Probably a little of both.

I have seen more outrage by whites than blacks over her use of the n-word. One of our editors at AL.com, Anthony Cook, reminded us that it’s not OK to use that word, but when you know better, you do better.

In very short order, that all-female jury will come back with a verdict in a region of the country that knows all too well about rioting when justice slaps them in the face.

In 1980, South Florida blacks set their communities on fire after the acquittal of four Miami-Dade police officers in the death of Arthur McDuffie, who died at the hands of the officers trying to arrest him after a high-speed chase.

They beat up their neighbors and killed a few, and smashed those store fronts that I’m sure represented a brand of oppression only those who face it every day of their lives can understand. The National Guard was sent in to quell the violence, but it was probably the local leaders in the black community who ultimately settled the outrage and brought back peace.

As Chris Rock once said about OJ Simpson’s apparent murder of his wife, it’s not right, but I understand.

The other day, my husband told me that a work contact of his, after seeing my photo, told him, “That girl is black, honey.”

Well, whatever. I probably am about 1/64 black; African blood found its way to Europe, where most of my people are from. I am Spanish, German, Irish and Cherokee, for the record. But I really am not sure why that matters – unless the reason you are asking is to find out what category you can shove me in neatly and tidily.

There’s not one.

I hope there is justice for Trayvon Martin. But I also hope that jury looks at the evidence that is available to them – which is different from what Ashleigh Banfield will go on and on about on CNN – and makes the right decision.

I hope when the verdict is read that my neighbors to the south don’t take justice into their own hands, and smash windows and set fires. I would like to think we have come too far for that.

But then I think about how just one generation ago my mother and father had doors slammed in their faces because they tried to love each other.

And I don’t think we're there yet.

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/201 ... rt_m-rpt-2