TG is a bit stuck on equality

Recently I wrote about our changed vacation plans because of the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida. And then this week I read a very moving blog post by Tikeetha Thomas titled My black son has a name. I was reminded of the writing my dear friend Patrice English did in trying to process the Trayvon Martin verdict titled My Sons In Repose. I am sad that there is such a large group of our society that has to live this way. And even more sad that there are people in our society who still judge others based on their race (or sexual orientation or their gender or their religion!). So here is my processing piece, written just after the Trayvon Martin verdict was announced. How I wish more recent events taught me I was wrong.

Unanswered

I am a person of privilege. Not of wealth or endless opportunity, not a person without struggles or obstacles or frustrations. But I am privileged. I grew up attending schools that didn't minimize the impact I could make on the world because I was female. I grew up being told that everyone was the same, regardless of their socio-economic class, race or sexual orientation. EVERYONE was welcome in my parents’ home, everyone. Our door was literally always open and we had people visit who didn't have two nickels to rub together and people who were ambassadors and royalty. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Protestants - all were welcome. Black, brown, beige, mulatto, all were welcome. Love men? Love women? Love both? Love neither? Come on in, you, too, are welcome. 

Rudeness, hatred, bias, prejudice - those were not welcome. Not only in my home but in my liberal hometown. Everywhere my siblings, my friends, I turned there was acceptance. And not only acceptance but appreciation of what made us different. Teach me your language, your customs, your history. We were practically kumbaya singing, daisies in our hair, hippies.

The first time I encountered any rigidity in this idea was when I was placing my older son for adoption. He was a wanted and adored baby who came too soon in my young life. But his father is Black and that made him "special needs." His Apgar scores were good, 8 and 10 and he had all his fingers and toes. How else can you judge a newborn baby (never mind why a newborn baby needs judging!). And, four years later, when his younger brother was born with a Dominican father and Latino sounding name, apologies were made to me for the assumption that he was a "clinic" baby, "I didn't know you had insurance, the test will be done immediately." The world I had grown up knowing wasn't actually real. There would be no more renditions of kumbaya.

And now, over a decade later and many decades after civil rights were fought for and supposedly won, it is clear that the world in which I grew up doesn't exist at all. Instead, we live in a world where a young man with all the hope and promise and potential of any other young man, can be killed. And if he had been a young man like my brothers, blond and blue eyed, the outrage would have been swift and definitive. But he was a young man more like my sons, like the sons and nephews and brothers of so many of my friends, so the outrage was somehow muted. And the demand for justice went unanswered. And Trayvon Benjamin Martin has died in vain. And that is an unacceptable travesty that wouldn't have happened in the world in which I thought I lived.