The news of Treyvon Martin hasn't made the newscycles in weeks.  He's been buried under Obama's bold declaration and Romney's disgraceful schooldays.  But as Florida's backwards laws recede into more topical issues, I can't stop thinking about that boy.

I sympathize.  I empathize.  I mourn.  I raise my angry fist against racial injustice.  But I won't be wearing a hoodie.  Thousands of white Americans like me have risen up in a united front to protest the senseless killing of Treyvon Martin.  We celebrated the ripples of racial awareness that his death has brought to light.  We have flooded the blogosphere, changed our avatars, and posted to our Facebook walls for all to see that we are decidedly against the killing of innocent black children, in case anybody had thought otherwise.  

Though my politics are just left of the average communist and I love to display my opinions on social issues (focusing on civil rights, natch), I've kept on the sidelines of the Treyvon Martin coverage, watching and reading, with a sense of unease.  In the wake of what was supposed to have been the ushering in of a post-racial America with President Obama's face and his wife's strong and shapely arms, this shooting in Florida serves as an almost perfect platform from which to call attention to the blatant bigotry that still poisons this country.  It's a way to say, Hold On.  We might have a black first family, but the average schmoe in Alabama believes that he is better than that Ivy League-schooled and world-traveled man.  And what's more, he thinks that the country might just be a little better off if that health-care providing, war-ending man is swinging from a high branch. And although these opinions might have been quieted or spoken about in the confines of that man's home in the past, the fervor and venom with which we attack our political figures in the media has unwittingly  provided a podium for his racist speech, disguised as "debate".  The black jokes of the prosperous eighties that were quieted by the liberals spreading b.s. like "political correctness" are crawling their way back into the vernacular.  What might seem like harmless talk is the groundswell of the white American population, using a wink and a nod and now a gun, to keep the black folks in their rightful place, below us.  

Is Treyvon Martin the obvious conclusion to the racial divide brought into the open by the election of our first black President?  Has this been coming?  The symbol of Barack Obama's face has been replaced by that of a seventeen-year-old boy in a hooded sweatshirt, the target and the outlet.  By self-righteously donning a hoodie and trying to identify with Treyvon, is white America doing the black community or the country as a whole any favors?  We are not the victims, even if we are not either the aggressors.  But the hoodies?  They seem to be a cop-out from addressing what the real issue is here.  There is a color divide in the United States.  It is socio-economic and geographically and racially based, it is exploited by our politicians and our talking heads, for gains that have nothing to do with the public good.  It tells us that we should hate, that we are different than those of the other color, that there is a fundamental disparity between what the blue states want and what the red states believe, and that the roots of those differences are evil.

 

The hoodies?  They feel like a distraction.  White Americans can absolutely feel sadness, anger, and shame at the death of Treyvon Martin.  We can empathize with a victim.  But we are not the victims.  The false unity of the hoodies distracts from what can be a true unifying thought: by listening to the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and fears of the "other," might we realize that the answer is not simply black and white: I wear a hoodie, therefore I am not racist.  The more complicated answer might be that we are all a mix of red and blue, that our states are purple, and that to honor a young boy we need to look inside ourselves and see not just the stoicism of Treyvon Martin, but the seeds of George Zimmerman.