Long, Hot Summer Ahead ?

or ... B(l)acklash.

If you live in an uneasily integrated area, it helps no one to stoke this story. Printing the little boy's picture in his Hollister gear, and pretending he was just a lil fella bouncing around on Skittles... It might help people think of their own middle-class children, but it hardly helps tell a truthful story.

Here's a current picture of the young man. He was allegedly on suspension from high school, for reasons yet to be disclosed. It's unclear whether he was supervised, at his father's girlfriend/fiance/baby mama? house, or if the Skittles and iced tea were the lanky lad's "dinner", or a snack.

For the life of me,
I can't understand why no one missed this kid until hours days later, identifying him at the morgue. Was he babysitting the father's girlfriends' son? Were any adults present at the home, or was the village indeed raising this child?

Had the boy spent much time in this community before his school suspension led him to be parked there? Did he have any ties that would make him call this community "home"? Or could George Zimmerman's story indeed be true?

That the young man -- color irrelevant -- looked suspicious, as he reported in one of his many neighborhood watch calls to police, because he was walking aimlessly between houses in the rain? With no place apparently to go.

I don't think policework is an easy job, and I'd love to see more black men step up to the plate, earn the grades honestly, pass the tests, and work in community policing themselves. Perhaps your son might serve his community in this way, one day?

"Walking while black" is convenient, if you've never lived in neighborhoods where things left outside not nailed down go missing, homes and garages routinely get broken into when no one's home, and "guests" -- particularly unsupervised "guests" sometimes don't respect neighborhood norms like those who live there and have a longer-term allegiance to the community.

If the independent witness who saw the alleged fight, and confirmed account that it was Zimmerman crying out for someone to help -- not the bigger (taller), younger, perhaps stronger Martin, who indeed looked cute and cuddly in that boyhood Hollister pic -- then perhaps the president will need to speak again on this topic.

Bounties, witnesss intimidation, threats, a lack of respect for the honest truth in trying to "wee wee up" the emotional story of a poor little boy beaten up and shot over his little bag of Skittles* by an angry old white man...

If calmer, more rational heads don't prevail, perhaps we haven't seen an end yet to violence (simply put, who initiated the physical contact?) and defense. I hope we can agree to respect the legal process, work for better ways to settle neighborhood disputes in these coming days of have's and have-not's, and especially -- to involve our own sons in constructive activies that keep them from roaming the streets unsupervised, seeking nourishment from convenience-store sugar, as they try to find their way "home" in our shared world...