“Angry Birds”, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Zimmerman Goes Free

I was up late last night in the studio working on Concept Art for a new “Angry Birds” commercial (“Every blog entry should include some self-promotion,” said the marketing guru). When I returned to the house, the verdict for the George Zimmerman trial was in: not guilty.

I was shocked. Knocked over by a wave of disbelief, then despair, then anger, like the blobby birds I’d been designing backgrounds for all day. I followed the trial. It seemed clear to me that a young man was dead, another man admitted to killing him, pointing to some self-defense story that was as made up as a bully on the playground might make up to try to save his skin in front of the school principal. Last night, George Zimmerman literally got away with murder.

Gregory Peck and the verdict, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

Trying to make sense of the tragedy — the killing and the trial — I remembered To Kill a Mockingbird. Didn’t the black man on trial get convicted by his jury, even though Atticus Fitch clearly proved him innocent?

Karma will handle the details here. Zimmerman will have to live with what he did, and I suppose only he knows the truth, since Trayvon Martin is no longer alive to tell us what he experienced. But I do feel the need to speak up, to add my voice to the conversation today.

I grew up in a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. King was murdered, 1968. My parents, good souls, went against the current and taught my sisters and I that prejudice was wrong, totally unacceptable in our house. Still, whenever we drove across town, over the railroad tracks on Danny Thomas Boulevard, through the black neighborhood that most other families referred to as “Niggertown,” my parents admonished us kids in an urgent whisper: “Lock your doors.” This in spite of their insistence that black people were certainly entitled to the same rights as us (read that: “white people”), the right to vote, to share drinking fountains and public swimming pools in the summertime.

Shocking as it feels to write that now nearly fifty years later, I heard echoes of that prejudice last week during the trial. At times, it seemed Trayvon was on trial, and for no other reason than for being a young black man walking in the rain.

Prejudice grows from fear, and growing up in the Mid South, we kids were fed a daily diet of it, as common as grits. But since I knew it was wrong, I saw nothing wrong with locking my doors (“better safe than sorry”) and I went happily on my way, assuming that fear and prejudice hadn’t taken root in me. I was a good person, and besides, true racists were much easier to spot. Think Archie Bunker, “All in the Family.”

And I encountered just as much racism in the north, going to college in Chicago. “My cousin was mugged by a black guy,” a guy I dated for about five minutes told me. “That’s why I hate niggers.”

(Sorry. I promise — last time I’ll use the N word.)

The truth is, the sight of a young black man still translates as “danger” for a lot of Americans. And for me sometimes, as progressive as I consider myself to be. I’ll confess: If I was walking down a dark street and saw a young African-American guy wearing a hoodie coming towards me, I would probably cross the street.

Guilty as charged. Not that I think that’s right, or fair. I’m not proud of that little fact, and I certainly wouldn’t defend it in court. One thing I feel fairly certain of: George Zimmerman lives in fear. Maybe the folks who donated to his online legal defense fund do too. But then, most of us live in fear of something, some Other. As much as I work to overcome it, my own prejudice pops up nearly everyday. It seems lodged inside me like a computer virus. And on a day like today, justice seems as faraway as Jupiter.

So I’ll work harder on my own prejudice and let myself imagine my own fear fading away into nothingness. I’ll picture Justice appearing on the blue horizon like a bright banner, unfurling. I’ll see other people of good conscience hearing the same call today. And if enough of us listen to that brave whisper behind the heavy drone of fear, then the tragedy of Trayvon Martin’s death, like Emmett Till’s, like Matthew Shepard’s, can stand for all time as a call to action, a testament to love, not fear.