On its face, the legal justification for Trayvon Martin\u2019s shooting \u2014 Florida\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law, which allows citizens to use deadly force to protect themselves or others from harm \u2014 is race-blind. The question remains whether the same can be said for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who pulled the trigger. His father says absolutely so \u2014 George, a former altar boy, had plenty of black friends, and even some black relatives. Though some listeners claim to have heard<\/strong><\/a> Zimmerman mutter, \u201cfucking coons\u201d while reporting Martin\u2019s movements to police dispatchers, others hear \u201ctools\u201d or \u201cpunks.\u201d<\/p>\n In the coming weeks, America will probably learn more about Zimmerman and his mindset than it ever wanted to know. Whatever mixture of affection and disaffection comes out in the wash, however, won\u2019t likely alter what\u2019s become conventional wisdom among blacks: that around anyone claiming to protect either private property or the public peace, they\u2019d better watch their step. In her blog, Watch and Pray for Our Children, Dr. Michelle Johnson explains<\/strong><\/a> how she aquaints her kids with what she calls \u201cthe rules\u201d:<\/p>\n 3. Know who you are. You can\u2019t do everything they do. In other words, just because your white friend does something that doesn\u2019t mean you can do the same. Whether it\u2019s hanging at the mall or going to a house party, police, teachers, and other authorities treat white children differently than black children. When my daughter is old enough to hang with friends in this manner, this will be one of \u201cthe rules.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. Go where you say you are going and come straight home. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time can lead to being falsely accused of crimes. Every year we hear about another person, usually a black male, who served time for a crime he didn\u2019t commit. As a parent, I\u2019m not trying to smother my child by making her check in with me. I just want to know where she is so I can vouch for her whereabouts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Is Johnson exercising every mother\u2019s God-given right by being alarmist? Maybe so. But I\u2019ve experienced the exact flip side of her worst-case scenario: police officers have generally treated me with indugence. Call \u2019em \u201cSir\u201d and don\u2019t argue, the rule goes, and the officers will let me off with a warning, or at worst a ticket for \u201cwaste of finite resources,\u201d which adds no points to the license. On at least two occasions, I had reason to believe that the benevolence I experienced had something to do with my race.<\/p>\n Possible Instance of White-Boy Privilege No. 1:<\/strong> Freshman year of college. I went to a keg party somewhere in downtown Phoenix with a small mob led by a volatile Bostonian named Brian. Within an hour, Brian had gotten himself into a fight, and the lot of us ejected onto the sidewalk. \u201cWe\u2019re going back in,\u201d shouted Brian, like Henry V at Harfleur, and proceeded to arm the storming party, your narrator included, with broken beer bottles. <\/p>\n Just then, a police cruiser pulled up and an officer stepped out. With his sidearm still safely in its holster, he asked what the hell we thought we were doing. When Brian began to babble back an answer through bloodied lips, the policeman cut him off. \u201cListen,\u201d he said, in elder-brotherly tones, \u201cI don\u2019t have time to deal with this kind of nonsense. I\u2019ve got to worry about Crips in that apartment compex\u201d \u2014 he pointed East \u2014 \u201cand Bloods in that apartment complex\u201d \u2014 he pointed West. \u201cDo yourselves and me a favor: drop this high-school crap and go home.\u201d We did. <\/p>\n That winter, when I was home in New York on break, I told the story to a black guy I\u2019d known in school. He sighed, rolled his eyes, made a number of other gestures that spelled out \u201cwhat fools these mortals be,\u201d and said, \u201cYou realize, if that was me, I\u2019d be under the jail, right?\u201d I did not dispute him.<\/p>\n Possible instance of White-Boy Privilege No. 2. <\/strong> When I began working at JP Morgan Chase, I was between cars. Reaching the office meant taking one bus to 24th St. and Van Buren, and changing to another that would take me to 16th and Buckeye; coming home meant doing the same thing in reverse. The outward trip, which I made in midmorning, was fine. The return trip, which began around nine in the evening, was a different matter. As a hub of drug-dealing and prostitution, 24th and Van Buren is \u2014 or, at any rate, was \u2014 a regular microcosm of urban blight. Standing on that corner for half an hour in business-casual, I felt like the last egg roll in a Chinese buffet.<\/p>\n One evening, the vibe was especially toxic. The parking lot of the Shell station behind the bus stop was filled with hard-eyed, shabbily dressed people I took to be hookers and other vice-industry professionals. I had the sense every New Yorker develops of being eyed up, cased as a possible target. A couple of men rode by on bicycles and threw me pointed looks. Reverting to habits learned over a hundred hours on dozens of subway platforms, I did my best to look nonchalant, keeping my head still as I turned my eyes up the street, hoping to catch sight of the approaching bus.<\/p>\n Just then three or four police cruisers rumbled into Shell\u2019s parking lot. When the officers began rousting and interrogating the loiterers, I felt like damsels must have felt when Bengal Lancers rescued them from Pathans on the Northwest Frontier. But the chivalry of the Phoenix Police Department turned out to exceed my wildest expecations. After the policemen finished their business \u2014 which, apparently, did not include arresting anyone \u2014 one of the officers asked me where I lived. When I told him, he offered me a ride home.<\/p>\n \u201cHell, yes,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll even tip you.\u201d<\/p>\n In his short story \u201cSonny\u2019s Blues,\u201d James Baldwin has a black woman tell her son how a car full of white men ran over his uncle, killing him, with no other motive than they were drunk, bored, and assured of getting away with it. \u201cI\u2019m telling you this,\u201d she explains to the young man, \u201cbecause you got a brother. And because the world ain\u2019t changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Baldwin set that scene during World War Two. Nowadays, in Mississippi, running over a black man with racial malice aforethought will get you life in prison,<\/strong><\/a> as 19-year-old Deryl Dedmon just discovered to his sorrow. Interracial marriages among blacks, whites and Latinos have increased tenfold<\/strong><\/a> since the 1960s. The product of one such marriage is in the White House, his black authenticity publicly challenged<\/strong><\/a> by a black man who would unseat him. Where race relations are concerned, the world really does appear to have changed, at least a little.<\/p>\n That\u2019s all great. I do wish, though, that things would change a little more, to the point where basically good black kids could expect to be sent home with a lecture when they\u2019re acting like morons, or a friendly ride home if they find themselves caught in a nasty neighborhood. Maybe that kind of thing does happen, but not, apparently, with enough regularity to sooth the fears of Michelle Johnson. I\u2019ll welcome the day she feels free to tell her kids what my mother told me, which was basically, \u201cClose the door quietly when you come in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On its face, the legal justification for Trayvon Martin\u2019s shooting \u2014 Florida\u2019s \u201cStand Your Ground\u201d law, which allows citizens to use deadly force to protect themselves or others from harm \u2014 is race-blind. The question remains whether the same can be said for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain who pulled the trigger. His father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[371,201,372,370],"class_list":["post-3286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-george-zimmerman","tag-race","tag-stand-your-ground-law","tag-trayvon-martin"],"yoast_head":"\n