My View of Racism

I can't say that I'm an authority on racism. Yes, I was raised in Mississippi. I spent K-9 in private school, no black people in attendance, and I went sophomore year in high school through graduation at a public school. I've heard racism on both sides, believe me. I once asked a teacher in private school if she should've said the "N" word, and she sent me to the principal's office. He couldn't do anything; she shouldn't have said it. He said something stupid about not questioning teachers and sent me back to class.

I thrived in public school. I reflected a lot on how much better Macon, Miss., would be, had the schools been more integrated. I made a lot of friends, both black and white, and I repeatedly thought how I wouldn't have had that experience in Macon. You didn't do that there, or so we always were told, but I never really, and to this day, don't understand why. When I go to visit my mom in my hometown, it's still very segregated, which is weird to me after living in Philadelphia, Pa., and even in Birmingham. I get so pissed when I see racism in the news, and people automatically assume everyone in the South is still 100 years behind the times.

With every situation, I try to see it from all angles. I've never been a black person. I can't say what they've experienced or try to identify with them. I can only speak from my experience. In light of recent news items involving Paula Deen and George Zimmerman, here are my thoughts, and because clearly, this is my blog, these are my opinions only:

I think Paula Deen is a fortunate businesswoman who got unbelievably lucky because people bought into her homespun charm and plucky attitude, and the sponsors didn't realize how strongly the public would bond to her. She is a person who found herself at the right place at the right time, and maybe thought she didn't need the best PR people money could buy, and God knows, she had the money. I don't think that she is a racist. I think she is a Southern woman who maybe doesn't think the "N" word is awful. She thinks that because of the generation in which she grew up, and that is not okay. She should have had handlers that told her talking about race the way she has done in the past is not okay, and her going live on TV crying and seeming like she was the victim was not okay. She could have done things a million different ways and come out looking  alot better than she does now, and she chose not to.

In the long run, she'll be fine. She's already amassed a small fortune, and losing her endorsements is not really going to break her. America loves redemption. She'll do Oprah on Oprah's network in a year or so and come out fine. If Eliot Spitzer and Mark Sanford and that Weiner guy, all politicians, can do it, I'm sure she can. She just needs to understand consequences.

Transversely, I guess, I want George Zimmerman to get off scot-free. That case, or issue, has bothered me since it happened. I'm not used to being on this side of a race issue, if you have to delegate sides, but I think he was within his rights to shoot that boy. I heard the base facts of the case when it happened, and I thought it seemed cut-and-dry. The boy attacked him after being confronted, and he retaliated in self-defense. I thought if something came to light between then and the trial, I was all for it. Nobody wants to think about a 15-year-old being a jackass, especially when he had to die.

However, the more I hear testimony from police and witnesses, I'm resolved in that I think this was not a good kid. You don't want to say bad things about a dead teenager, and I feel for the attorney doing this, because I guarantee you, he may have his face and name splashed across the national news, but he does not feel good about bringing up derogatory facts about a dead teenager.

The media or whoever keeps trying to portray this as a "racial" crime, with Zimmerman being the "white" nemesis, and I don't understand this. He is clearly Hispanic; I have not followed the trial enough to know if he was born here, or second-generation, etc ... but I just don't see how this can be a racial crime. If a person looks suspicious and you confront them verbally, why should they attack you, or even in the first place, if they are freaked out by your suspicion, why would they go back to where you are and purposely antagonize you? I'm sorry, but I think George Zimmerman defended his neighborhood and his person according to what he knew best. I am very sorry that Trayvon Martin died, but I think he was either not in his right mind, or he had an odd way of trying to exhibit his dominance.