George Zimmerman In America

Been sitting back for the last few days taking in the reaction to the Zimmerman verdict.

Hearing words I have heard before. Words that infuriated me, some that amused me, some that disappointed me.

The biggest disappointment is that I am hearing the same things again.

Mindless racists who deny their racist attitudes in public and celebrate them in private, defending our legal system and saying the decision makes sense.

I found out about the verdict while working at The Asylum last Sunday. A guy came in and told me he just saw a bunch of cop cars, sirens loudly wailing, screaming past him. He wondered where they were going, and then said "maybe there is a riot going on because of the verdict." He then proceeded to tell me he had work experience within the legal system and knew the decision was the right one, explaining it to me in blatantly racist overtones.

I wanted to strangle him.

I didn't contradict him because I work in retail. The agreement is that you don't piss off the customer.

There should be exceptions. I should have been able to tell this guy that he is a racist pig who hates people because of the color of their skin and that because of that he has no rightful place in this life.

We have endured racially polarizing incidents and trials in the past; too many, too frequently.

Racist cretins celebrate the injustices suffered by the black population. Intellectuals say stuff like it's time we had an honest conversation about racism in this country. Legal folk defend our legal system as if it could not be corrupt.

Everything is corrupt.

"There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen.

I have been listening. And thinking.

One intellectual said white people see black people and that is the first thing that registers in their mind.

It's true.

I don't consider myself a racist but I could be fooling myself into thinking I am more evolved than I am because I want to be.

When I encounter a black person, it immediately registers that they are black. I feel no hatred, I feel no threat, I do not consider myself superior, but my mind says "this person is black."

I don't know what that means.

The most disturbing thing to me is being made aware that black fathers routinely have conversations with their sons telling them how to act in public and especially around police.

I have heard this many times since the verdict.

It breaks my heart.

I have two beautiful and very precious sons. I never had to warn them about how to behave in public and in front of the police.

Black fathers my age told stories of their own fathers having this conversation with them and they in turn having the same conversation with their sons.

Do you really believe we are making progress in America?

We are not.

Eugene Robinson, a Pulitzer prize winning author who deserves your respect, wrote in the Washington Post on July 15:"But black boys in this country are not allowed to be children. They are assumed to be men, and to be full of menace............ If anyone wonders why African Americans feel so passionately about this case, it's because we know that our 17-year-old sons are boys, not men. It's because we know their adolescent bravura is just that - an imitation of manhood, not the real thing."

And: "The conversation we need to have is about how black men, even black boys, are denied the right to be young, to be vulnerable, to make mistakes. We need to talk about why, for example, black men are no more likely than white men to smoke marijuana but nearly four times as likely to be arrested for it - and condemned to a dead-end cycle of incarceration and unemployment. I call this racism. What do you call it?"

When I was a boy, blacks were not allowed into the same restaurants as whites, not allowed to drink from the same water fountains, and god forbid, not allowed to swim in the same public pools lest the pure white folk catch some horrible disease.

Is there a disease worse than racial prejudice?

I cannot believe, cannot believe, cannot believe that these conditions existed in my lifetime.

Nothing has changed.

Nothing will change.

I don't know what it is about this country, but our lives revolve around a deep, impenetrable and unacceptable thread of pure hatred. Hatred from hell. Hatred like only The Devil himself could create.

I theorize that it is the karma we created by coming to this country and raping it and deliberately destroying the culture of Native Americans who were light years ahead of us in spirituality and intelligence.

This country was founded on lies and bloodshed and racial prejudice.

We are incapable of learning from the horrors and injustices we have perpetrated because it is easier to hate than to love, and we are a lazy civilization.

Racist cretins are beyond hope. They will not change their opinions and they will breed children who will carry those opinions forward.

Intellectuals are beyond hope because an honest and uncomfortable dialogue will not change a goddamn thing; will not open up a mind. It will only make the conversationalists feel better about themselves.

The painful truth is that people will always hate other people simply because of the color of their skin.

So vicious, so stupid, so limiting.

This country came alive in 1776. Slaves were freed in 1865. Civil rights legislation was passed in the 1960's.

At that rate, blacks might have a shot at equality in the year 2213.

It will never happen. We will never get there.

Equality is not achieved in legislation; equality is achieved in the mind.

The mind of America is terminally ill.