This thing with +Trayvon Martin still bothers me. How can it
be that he lived in such a different world from me? I did not grow up rich but
I did grow up white. Something a talking head on TV mentioned gave me a completely
new perspective on the problem of race. People make fun of the situation by
saying things like “Driving while being black or walking while being black. This
person on TV said something about examining the “pathologies” of rich kids and comparing
them to those poor kids. He really meant comparing white kids with black kids,
in other words, “being a teenager while being black” is not at all like being a
teenage while being white.
I remember stories of +George W. Bush, +Mitt Romney, +Bill
Clinton and +Barak Obama while in high school and college. We all know how
these teenage antics influenced their later life because they were made public
by the press because their ultimate positions. In essences, their school age pranks
had no impact on their lives. Instead of thinking about presidents, think of the
antics of run of the mill rich kids verses those of average poor kids. Think of
the binge drinking; public nudity; drug experimenting with drugs, especially “pot”;
and wild antics of hazing of pledges in the context of college fraternities and
mentally translate that kind of activity to the streets of a poor neighborhood.
Campus police, sometimes without even having the power of arrest, take care of a
wild fraternity party while in a poor neighborhood hardened police handle it
without even mention in a student’s academic record. They are both groups of teen-agers
and young adults, however, in one case, police make arrests and entire lives
are changed: police records, indictment, drug possession, sexual assaults, resisting
arrest, prison, parole, etc in the other, nothing; that was Trayvon’s world
verses my world.
No wonder parents of black teen-ages have to instruct their
sons about how to behave in the presences of police while rich parents never
have that talk with their sons—it is a different world.
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