When riding through a small town to visit our family, in the rural south where my daddy was raised, while he was on leave, my sister questioned a sign she saw on the local laundry mat. The sign read, "Whites Only." My sister asked where people washed their colored clothes. Our dad laughed then started explaining the ways of the south. He also told us there was such a thing as the concept of white niggers. To my dad this word did not define a race but a type of person. Being raised on small military bases we never felt race. Daddy had friends of all colors and nationalities and so did we. We might have four different races in one stairwell of six families. One of my neighbors, who happened to be a soul brother told me that if we could put all my freckles on one arm, I could be a soul sister. I felt no insult by the remark.
My daddy's father was of Scottish descent and his mother was half Creek Indian. His daddy was from northwest Florida and his mother's ancestry were from tribes in Georgia removed and relocated to Southeast Alabama under the Indian Removal Act. My family lineage knows a little something about prejudice. Perhaps there is something in the DNA that helps with the empathy factor depending on ancestry life experience. However, my education leads me to believe life experience is more apt to shape empathy or prejudice. I have always had empathy for others and I am one racially mixed up individual. Once, while in an undergraduate sociology class a professor informed me I could never understand the social injustice done to African Americans. I considered that a great personal insult to my American Indian roots and my African American roots that he could not see and I felt no need to explain. My great great grandfather is listed in the African Americans of Robeson County North Carolina.
It is high time that race gets out of the closet just like sexual preference. There would be a lot less profiling if it were a subject we did not tiptoe around. I moved to the south in the 70s and was in severe culture shock for me personally. The youth of America need to feel free to discuss their feelings without persecution. Why can't people simply try a little harder to understand one another? I do not get it. Why can't a white person understand the fear a young black man expresses or the frustration of his father?
While watching CNN Headline News, I happened upon a report by Ryan Smith. At the time of this writing he was conducting interviews with three fathers and sons concerning their feelings about the George Zimmerman Second Degree Murder Trial. One of the father/son pairs was black, one was Hispanic, and one was white. (He will continue to interview these three fathers and sons during the entire trial which is just under way and is expected to last several weeks.) Out of the three, the white father seemed utterly clueless concerning racial issues.
For example, one statement was made concerning the black man's fear for his sons future. He was raising his son with the knowledge that would have to work harder than a white man to get as far as a white man in life. The white man asked why since we now have a black president did he not feel that pressure was gone? Wow, one half black, half white, raised in Hawaii, Harvard Educated man made it to President of the United States has now leveled the playing fields between these two races of blacks and whites. Isn't that nice. If this is a representative sample of our nation, I am just as sickened by this attitude as I was by the black professor who felt I could not understand, empathize, relate, or in any way speculate what another race felt when persecuted because I did not share that color of skin.
Websters online dictionary defines empathy as
the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner; also : the capacity for this
If humans have the capacity for empathy, then it must be assumed, that we can understand the actions of George Zimmerman have increased the fear of profiling for young black men. In my opinion, it may not be the traditional Paula Dean's of the south that would do harm to these hoodie wearers, but the newer settlers to the south; the new racists. Tell it like it is. There are racists of all skin tones but the majority may not be Caucasian any more. When he, Mr. Zimmerman, was talking on his phone to the 911 operator he defines Trayvon Martin as a black male in his late teens. The transcripts of this discussion can be found at http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/326700-full-transcript-zimmerman.html There are many derogatory statements made towards the young man in my opinion, Travon, was responding like an animal being tracked by a hound.
Mr. Zimmerman's handgun made him feel a little stronger than he actually was. He took on a younger man that was physically stronger than him. Trayvon would have won a natural fight. Trayvon was not in a position to go after the gun or see the gun as reported by Zimmerman. George did not forget he had a gun as he suggests. Trayvon was murdered plain and simple because George in a fit of wanna-be-cop, little-man, macho man, racists stupidity, he took on this younger and stronger boy and also took this young man's life.
As I stated previously, there is a new racist in town and and may not originate from the deep south. That is not to say that racists do not remain here either. The world is full of these racists both the old and new and they are not to be eradicated any time soon without serious intervention.
I am a board certified behavior analyst. I believe that the science of behavior analysis can be used to battle these unwanted behaviors and change the world in which we live.
(Cynthia Boyd, M.S., B.C.B.A)
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