Not again....

I feel like I just wrote about Trayvon.  I feel sick to have to write about this kind of shit again.   This is a actually a facebook post in response to this article, which discusses how white perpetrators and black victims are portrayed in the media aftermath of various incidences.  It's chilling.  And somehow, drives the point home even more strongly than the  "if they gunned me down" website--which is incredibly powerful, itself.  

So.

"This is by no means standard media protocol, but it happens frequently, deliberately or not."

Out of all the statements in all the articles I've been seeing, this is the one. If it's not standard, but is frequent, and if there is a question as to whether these discrepancies are deliberate or not, this indicates another force, if you will, at play. There is something in our culture that predisposes us to portray one set of people in one way and another set in a completely different way, regardless of what reaction their actions might logically inspire. Simply calling it racism, while probably accurate, does a wonderful job of shutting down any possibility of actual conversation--it expresses the anger, outrage, sadness, and terror of some, inspires defensiveness and a deaf ear in others, burdens some with a guilt they can never hope to escape, and generally ensures that anyone engaged in a conversation in that framework will be speaking from such diametrically opposed viewpoints, they might as well be speaking completely different languages. 

As honest a term as racism might be, it might be time to recognize that certain words do more to keep us stagnant than moving toward a resolution. Racism (like sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, etc etc etc) are so culturally ingrained as to be almost invisible. Those of us who are attuned to notice such injustices can point to virtually any situation and see at least one of those systems of oppression operating, at least on some level. What we might not always realize, however, is how those words feel to the un-attuned--and how the defensiveness these words inspires effectively shut down any opportunity for real conversation. 

Perhaps we should begin to talk about the complex intersection of events and experiences that leads to that moment where the choice to shoot or not, to demonize or not, to sympathize or not--is so apparently clear. The terms that we tend fall back create the verbal equivalent of blunt force trauma, and we've reached a point where we need to be engaging in the most delicate brain surgery imaginable. A baseball bat might eradicate a tumor, but leaves little room for survival. Anger, outrage, grief, and helplessness are how we feel; how we act, what we say, the conversations we facilitate or impede are how we change things so that next time, maybe, everyone gets another chance.