George Zimmerman...How Do I Feel

Nothing...I know that this is a sad realization, but that's honestly how I feel right now.  On the night that the verdict came out, my wife calls me...worried...and asks me to be careful tonight while I am on my gig in San Francisco, CA.  I guess I kinda feel bad for not feeling anything, but then again I don't.  The reasoning behind this is because feeling about things of this nature, and having passion for things of this nature makes you weird.  It's perfectly acceptable for someone to have passion for the environment or whales or vegan lifestyles, but when you are passionate about racial inequities or class inequities, or political inequities you are immediately identified as one of 'those guys'.  And in America being one of 'those guys' removes you from a lot of social interaction lists.

I'm not sure when I devolved into this mindset, but I can tell you that it probably has a lot to do with being a black guy in an education environment.  I can remember the first time I actually had the thought "Be careful Kenny!!! Don't say anything."  It was right after Obama was elected for his first term.  Being the youngest of 3 black teachers on campus, I guess I was the easiest for people to talk to.  One of my administrators comes up to me and says, "Now that Obama has been elected, I guess that means we're past the race issue now, right Kenny?"  I replied with an, "I don't know."  But I wanted to stand on my soap box and call upon my inner every-angry-Samuel-Jackson-character and reply along the lines that this isn't the end of racism, but only the beginning of racism shifting to another, more sophisticated state.  I imagine that this was the beginning of me starting not to feel anything about the issue of race.

In all honesty, this is how I feel about a lot of things.  This is how I'm beginning to feel about politics and social programs as well.  I think it's one of those things where people will ask me how I feel about something hoping that I actually have not put much thought into these things.  For the past 5 years, I have put out a plea for someone to have an educated conversation with me about a whole range of issues from Christianity, to Politics, to race and class issues, and not one person has stepped up to the plate.   A lot of people like my responses, but no one actually says ok.  And, quite frankly, the willingness of someone to make a blanket statement about a group of people or a situation pisses me off.  Not because I belong to that group involved in the blanket statement, but because it's based on people not doing their homework on the stuff they hear.  I'm sure that everyone just thinks that I'm talking about Fox News, or other conservative outlets, but the liberal outlets are guilty of it too.

The real problem with our society is the unwillingness to face the issues head on and have that tough discussion.  This is the reason why our deficit is so high, because we don't want to face the issue and have the tough conversation.  This is why we owe China so much money, because we don't want to have to face the issue and have the tough conversation.  This is why we have such a huge divide on abortion, gay marriage, gun control, taxes, affirmative action, immigration, and all the other issues that we let both sides of the media blow up into these huge, complicated things; when the solutions are extremely simple.  I know what you're thinking..."Oh wait Kenny, you don't really believe that immigration is simple.  You're crazy if you think that a huge problem like immigration is simple."  If you think this, let me ask you do you even know what's holding up immigration reform? One of the issues is that most Democrats want to give the illegal immigrants who have been in America that have served, or are currently serving, in our military AND the illegal immigrants who have graduated from, or are currently attending,  college American citizenship; where most Republicans want these group of illegal immigrants to jump through 13 years of hoops in order to become a bona fide American.  Are you telling me that a group of sensible people like you or me can't come up with a solution if we sat down and had a conversation about this.  Seems like a no-brainer right???

But that's what happens when you let people who make their living off of making the laws scare you into voting for them so that they can keep their jobs.  This is why I don't feel when something as awful as a kid being shot by an adult because that adult followed him home.  This is why I don't feel anything when an adult kills a kid because he felt afraid for his life.  This whole thing reminds me of this South Park episode http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/149674/its-coming-right-for-us.  Not saying that the Stand Your Ground laws are anything like this...well yeah I pretty much am.

So how do I feel about the Trayvon Martin situation.  I feel that until we, as a nation, are prepared to have a hard conversation with each other, that we are doomed to spiral down the same drain of results when similar situations occur.  Sorry if I called everyone out, but I'm just thinking out loud.