"35 Years Ago, It Could Have Been Me"

 

“35 years ago, this could have been me.” These were President Obama’s words about Trayvon Martin in his impromptu speech on July 19^th, following Zimmerman's not guilty verdict for the murder of Trayvon.

And it hit me in that moment. 35 years ago, theoretically, it could have been me, too. But it wasn’t.

For 16 months, the right-wing media has been on a nonstop campaign to portray Trayvon Martin- the murder victim- as a thug who deserved what he got. He was, after all, suspended from school for having traces of marijuana in his backpack. And he sent a few inappropriate tweets.

Let me tell you about my own teenaged past.

Like Trayvon, I was a good student, getting mostly A's and B's.

I also smoked pot.

I drank at parties.

I was picked up by the police for truancy, even handcuffed and taken in to the station.

I was in trouble with the principal for forging absence notes.

I sent inappropriate notes to friends filled with bad words (my day’s version of tweeting)

I once shoplifted, to see if I could get away with it. I did, because security never follows me in a store.

I got in a few fistfights when I was younger. (Like Trayvon, I defended myself against bullies.)

On my way to or from parties, I was often walking in wealthy neighborhoods late at night, where I didn’t belong.

But no one ever thought I was a bad kid. No one ever bothered me when I was walking in wealthy neighborhoods late at night because I looked like this:

  

And though I was a poor kid from the other side of the tracks, my mother never had to worry about someone shooting me for walking in the wrong neighborhood.

And then there’s my friend Dennis. He and I grew up together since the first grade. We lived in the same neighborhood. Had the same friends. Went to the same parties. But Dennis is black. His experience was very different than mine. Dennis served in the military just out of high school. He was stationed in Coronado, a very wealthy, very white neighborhood in San Diego. Every weekend when he was on leave and in civilian clothes, he would get pulled over by police and questioned: What are you doing here? Where are you going? What's in your car?  

Can you imagine serving in the U.S. military, and facing that humiliation week after week? And the thing is, though Dennis and I have been best friends for 45 years, he'd never told me that before. Immediately after the Zimmerman verdict, Dennis called me, and for the first time ever, we talked about race.

If there is any silver lining in this Trayvon Martin tragedy, it's that it has opened up some necessary wounds, and given us all a strong dose of reality. It’s time we all start sharing our stories. It's time we really listen, and try to understand another person’s point of view.

When I started working in gun violence prevention after Newtown, I began talking with a lot of parents who had lost children. Many of those parents were black. They too were moved to action by Newtown, but their words to me were: This has been happening in our communities for a long time. Our children are dying every day, but no one notices. It took the murder of 20 white children to get America's attention.

Linda Jay, one of the most courageous warriors for gun reform that I know, holds a picture of her daughter who was murdered.

Before I met these parents, I didn’t really know how deep the problem was because the media’s coverage is so minimal. Until I was standing in the streets marching with these mother and fathers, I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t really know.

Now I know. We all know. And it’s up to us to take action. No mother or father should ever have to lose a child, or to face this kind of injustice again.

If Trayvon Martin was a thug, then I was a thug, too. But because of the color of my skin, I got to finish high school, go on to college, and have a family, a full life and a rewarding career. I want all children to be safe on the streets of America. I want them to be safe in their neighborhoods, in schools, in movie theatres. I want them to be safe from dangerous Stand Your Ground laws devised by the NRA. All children deserve to grow up to have the opportunities I had.

Currently 24 states have Stand Your Ground (or similar) laws. I will stand my ground as a mom- and campaign until the last of these laws is overturned.

(Click here to read my blog on the roots of racism: Lizard Brain Strikes Again )

Black in America- a guest post by Marquis Alexander

Today I turn my blog over to guest writer, Marquis Alexander. My husband Troy became friends with Marquis while the two of them were in an improv troupe. They spent a year laughing and performing together. Marquis is one of the funniest people I know. He is smart, highly educated, a political activist. He is friendly, outgoing and kind.  He also happens to be a black man, which has rendered him subject to experiences that many of us could never imagine. In the wake of George Zimmerman's "not guilty" verdict, I think we all need to wake up. We need to share our stories, we need to listen more. This is Marquis' experience of being black in America.

The Zimmerman Verdict Through the Eyes of a Black Man
By Marquis Alexander
 

We live in a nation that is terribly divided. A nation where some of its citizens are letting out cheers of joy because the shooter of a teenager walks free while others sheds tears of sadness because they feel that yet again our justice system has declared that while all men are created equal, all men are not regarded as such in the eyes of the law. Let me be clear, I feel no hate or ill will towards George Zimmerman. He is just another actor in this tragic play called America. I don't think he woke up in the morning looking to kill Trayvon on that fateful day, but I feel he was certainly responsible for the unnecessary death of a young man who was just trying to go home. In theory, when the gun toting George Zimmerman chose to get out of his car and "make sure the little punk didn't get away" instead of allowing the police to do their jobs, he then assumed responsibility for all that would follow. That's the way it should work, in theory, anyway.

Unfortunately, the jury and a large swath of America don't see it that way. As a black man what this judgment underscores isn't a lack of justice for Trayvon, but a deeper, scarier truth that I am not a man, but a suspect. This verdict says that if my mere presence as a black man is enough for you to feel threatened, and if you act from that place of fear your actions will be justified under the law and you will face no consequences if you turn out to be completely wrong and I end up completely dead.

The most difficult thing with this case is trying to explain to white people what it feels like to be a suspect every moment of your life. I'm sure every black male has a story of when they were pulled over for driving while black, walking while black, or hell just breathing while black. I'll list just a few of mine:

 I was 12 the first time I was randomly stopped by police and questioned because I was walking through Broadview (a white suburb of Chicago) on my way to my aunt's house in La Grange. After convincing them that I wasn't up to no good, they told me to hurry it along. When I was 14, I was a freshman on the football team at Proviso East High School which happened to be all black. After getting our asses kicked by Downers Grove South, we were walking to the bus to head back home. A few Downers Grove policemen pulled up, jumped out of their squad cars, hands on guns, and asked our white coach "Are you okay? Are these guys bothering you?" Even after he had assured them that the large black men WEARING FOOTBALL UNIFORMS were his team and that he was fine, they still asked him "Are you sure?" When I was 17 (same age as Trayvon) I was pulled over while biking to my father's house in Palos Hills. After explaining to the officers that I was coming from work (mind you I'm wearing my Burger King uniform and Burger King hat) and heading home, they commenced to tell me I was headed the wrong way and that the Trace (the subdivisions where the poor and middle class families lived) was that way. Giving him my best what the fuck are you talking about face, I told him "My father doesn't live in the Trace."

I could go on and on with these stories, like the time my white friends got a DWBIPS that's driving with blacks in the passenger seat or the time I almost got shot by police for having the audacity to be standing outside of the apartment building I manage, but that would be like shooting a dead horse carrying a bag of skittles.

Marquis addresses a large crowd at USC.

I know what some of you are thinking, "This is different, this Trayvon kid got kicked out of school for having marijuana and fighting. You went to Northwestern, there's no way you would end up like that." To that I say, google Robert Russ. Robert was a year ahead of me at Northwestern and was so easy going he was given the nickname “Fluff”. Now mind you he played defensive line so he was a BIG dude, a big BLACK dude. One night, just a few days before he was supposed to walk across the stage and get his diploma from a top 15 university, Fluff was shot and killed by police. The officer claimed self-defense, saying Fluff reached for the officer's gun and was cleared by the department. REALLY?!? An honors student AT NORTHWESTERN reached for an officer's gun. REALLY? Luckily for Fluff's family, the jury in the civil trial saw through that horse shit and gave them a sizable judgment. Though they may have felt a small bit of vindication, the fact is no amount of money his daughter, girlfriend, and mother received, is going to bring back Fluff.

The scary part is that I know there is no way for the police or any overzealous vigilante to know who I am or what I've done while I'm walking down the street. They wouldn't know that I've opened up for The President in front of forty thousand people or that I was the only man who spoke on a Ladies Night fundraiser with The First Lady and Jill Biden. They wouldn't know that I graduated from Northwestern, or that I built a robot to win my 8th grade science fair. They wouldn't know that I've raised money for the arts and the environment, that I've tutored young people and taught at one of the worst schools in Chicago. All they would know (which is the same thing that George Zimmerman knew about Trayvon) is that I am a black male, which in turn makes me a suspect, and you will receive no penalty for treating me as such.

Lizard Brain Strikes Again

"I’m not a racist but…"

Any time you hear that opening (and unfortunately, I have) you can be assured that person is a racist. No one admits to it. Not the tea party people with their hateful signs, not the elected officials who send out racial slurs in emails and call them harmless jokes. And many of those are the same people who justify the senseless death of Trayvon Martin. “I’m not a racist, but when someone goes walking around late at night wearing a hoodie, looking suspicious…”

No matter how it is denied, racism is alive and well, and in fact, it is thriving in the lizard-brain.

Let me explain what I mean by lizard brain. The basal ganglia, termed “the Reptilian Complex” by American neuroscientist Paul Mc Lean, is the most base and simplistic part of our brain. This structure is shared by reptiles and birds, and was probably all we had before we evolved. Mc Lean theorized it was  “responsible for species typical instinctual behaviors involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays”. We are all capable of operating from this lowest functioning part of our brains. We are also capable of functioning higher.

In our lizard brain, we are fearful and territorial. Advertisers know this. Media knows this. The Pharma industry knows this. Politicians know this. They push the fear button to keep us following them like zombies.

In our lizard brain, we are tribal. We attack people at sporting events. We fear people of other races, religions, socioeconomic standing. We move away to gated societies to keep “the others” out. 

In the military, they train soldiers to kill by making the enemy subhuman - “the other”…the “one you should fear”. It’s how Hitler was able to convince German citizens to look the other way while he committed genocide.

The vitriolic right-wing has done a bang-up job of making our President “the other” - “the one you should fear”. They appeal to uneducated, unworldly people, and go straight for the lizard brain. He is a Muslim. He is a Kenyan. His birth certificate is fake. He pals around with terrorists. I mean, really, when has any other president been subjected to such nonsense? Being called a LIAR in Congress? Having a congresswoman angrily point a finger in your face?

Let’s call it what it is. He is BLACK. And the vitriolic right wingers are sending the message: Watch out white people, for President Obama is “the other”. Its this kind of racism, directed even toward our President- the most powerful leader in the free world- that filters down to a young kid like Trayvon, walking home with some Skittles in his pocket.

Its no wonder that citizens who watch FEAR news all day long are feeling threatened. Their lizard brains are conditioned to fear the other, to protect themselves. I wonder what cable news Zimmerman follows. I think I can make an educated guess…

The only way to free ourselves from this hateful way of being, the only way to stop more innocent children from being senselessly shot down in the street, is to evolve. We must open our minds and listen. We must educate ourselves and others, to move our thinking to a higher place.

The next time you get one of those hateful, bigoted emails from your weird uncle, just remember, he’s coming from his lizard brain. The best thing we can do for Lizard-brain is not to engage with him or get angry (that’s where lizard brain thrives) but instead to expose him to something different (beauty, culture, love) that can only be processed in a different part of his brain.

When he makes a hateful post on your facebook page, post a picture like this on his:

It’s up to us to rise above our lizard brains. We have to be the ones who educate. Be the ones who encourage tolerance. Be the ones who put positive, enlightening information into the world every day.

And whatever we do, we can’t make lizard-brains our “other” – the ones we should fear, because then we are operating from our own lizard brains.