David Simon on the Zimmerman/Martin Verdict

Simon says pretty much some of the things I feel.

I was with my son this past weekend when the verdict was announced. He just moved to Atlanta with his mother and her partner. This was my first visit since they moved about a month ago. We were playing video games and watching a movie Saturday night when I heard the jury had made a decision.  My son is just about to turn 13. He's black/hispanic (mom's hispanic, dad's black--I'm technically his stepdad, but have been with him since he was 3 and by all purposes am his dad).  You try to protect them from these things for as long as you can, but the fact is that he's getting older and needs to know the way the world work when it comes to being a young black male in society.  He's goofy, funny and funky, all things that make him special.  But to someone who doesn't know him and has stereotypes of young black boys, those things aren't recognized and don't matter.

I cut and pasted the entire as much of it summarized how I feel (see below the break).  You can go to the original post by clicking here.

You can stand your ground if you’re white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you’re black, you’re dead.

In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all.  And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man — and one man only — had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary.

If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve.  I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own.

Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies:  Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible.  I can’t look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country.  Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.