How Can This Be?

I’m stunned. Truly and hugely.

And I have no words (shocking, no?).

There are many who do and they are wonderfully eloquent.

Cord Jefferson is one of them.

Tonight a Florida man’s acquittal for hunting and killing a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy serves as a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it’s a triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over the liberal media, which had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along. For liberals, it's a tragic and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it’s a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.

Read the whole post -- The Zimmerman Jury Told Young Black Men What We Already Knew -- over at Gawker. Please.

Before she met my father, my mother, Lucy Fanelli Maderer, briefly lived in Florida. This would’ve been sometime around 1950. I don’t know why she moved back North but throughout childhood we were told that the South was uncivilized. She also mentioned something about giant flying cockroaches. //shudder//

Watching the news, reading about the Freedom Riders, MLK Jr., the Klan (you know they actually have a few websites? and no, the link doesn't go to their site. no linkies to terrorist group sites here), listening to the protest songs -- all of it reinforced my mother's words.

I know there are good people in Florida too -- like my friend Steve -- but today it’s hard to keep that in mind.

The fundamental danger of an acquittal is not more riots, it is more George Zimmermans. -- Jay Smooth