The Face of Racism

The killing of Trayvon Martin has been on my mind all week. Monday I read the stories and listened to the 911 calls in shock and horror. How has his killer not yet been charged? How has such a thing happened? He was only a child in a hoodie wielding a bag of skittles, which has contributed to there being a national outcry over the incident. How many times has a similar thing happened to a grown man that we have not heard about?

The sad thing is, it is all too easy to understand. As many blog posts have explained, this is the cost of being a young black man in America today. Some people have questioned whether this is about race, perhaps because the killer was latino... but white people are not the only ones capable of racism. We as a people need to be aware that this is the face of racism in America today, both individually and on a systemic level: it is less often about outright discrimination and more often about subtle unconscious biases that are never examined.

George Zimmerman didn't think to himself, "I hate black people so I am going to kill this boy," though those crimes still happen; he saw a person he identified as suspicious, was angry that "These assholes always get away," and took it on himself to.... well, to commit violent murder! I am at my limit of trying to understand how people can do these things and convince themselves they were in the right; how people can blame the killing on a hoodie; how the police can "correct" a witness, take a killer at his word, and hold themselves blameless. I can no longer find it fascinating to try to understand their intentions. It is easy to understand. This is the face of racism, operating on a subconscious level, and we as a people need to grow up and deal with it.

What that requires is a lot of personal responsibility, even for those of us reading about this killing with disgust. We cannot respond by pointing the finger somewhere else: at the police; at those racists in Florida; at the culture of white privilege; at ignorance. We first have to look into ourselves and critically examine the attitudes that we have about groups of people different than us. We have to make a conscious effort to analyze our emotional reactions. We need to call out our friends and family when they make racially-charged remarks (or other stereotyping behavior).

In writing this I remembered Barack Obama's famous speech on race during his 2008 campaign and am listening to him now, as he talks about his own grandmother expressing racist attitudes and discusses the history of slavery. If we do not take Trayvon Martin's killing as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and about the context of race in America then we have failed in our responsibility as human beings, as thinking and feeling creatures, as spiritual people, as rational individuals. We are the face of racism.

Immensity

Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was a skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of the water, the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King," p. 64

This is why I will always be reading and re-reading Tolkien. I may put LOTR away for a few months or more, but when I'm ready, I will find my bookmark and read something beautiful. I must have read this paragraph 10 times before, but this time it was new and powerful. I want to go to a mountain and listen to the whisper of dark trees! I want to listen to the vast waiting silence that broods behind all sound! And especially, I want to return from the mountains to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.

Experiences of awe such as Tolkien describes can be overwhelming; one can lose oneself in the vastness. At first this feeling can be exciting: sit on a mountain, or gaze at the stars, and you become small in relation to your experience, but at the same time you become part of the immensity itself. "Formless! Boundless!" (to roughly quote the Tao Te Ching...) You lose you to become the experience. This can be thrilling, but it can also be frightening. After all, we are used to thinking of ourselves as ourselves and not the entire universe. When Middle-earth gets too huge we look for a safe place to be ourselves again.

It takes courage to lose yourself in immensity. The deep ocean, the high mountain, the crowded city center, the vast waiting silence that broods behind all sound... Most of us don't have the time (or the will) to experience vast strangeness, like Merry on an epic journey he could not anticipate, finding himself bereft of his friends. We don't often willingly put ourselves into a situation where nothing is familiar, without guarantee of security or a safe way home again. Those who do are praised as heroes. But although we may think of a hero as an Aragorn figure with a destiny for greatness, clarity of purpose, strength and kindness and a long stride, most heroes (and most of us) are more like the hobbits, who dream of eggs and bacon and a seat by the fire, and for whom Middle-earth is best experienced through stories brought from far away; but the immensity is there for us all, waiting for us to enter.