Get over it

As I’ve read some off the wall interpretations and reactions to the President’s remarks yesterday about the Trayvon Martin case, I thought I would put up the video. Nothing like the original to make folks identify precisely what they found offensive or ill-founded:

In my way of thinking, the President here is showing himself not only thoughtful but also appropriately sensitive to a wide range of reactions to the case. I can’t imagine why some think he is speaking only for black people, even if he is definitely speaking from his experience as a black man in American. I’m what this society calls “white” and I can assure you he speaks for me: better training for the police, making sure our laws don’t encourage violence, targeted efforts to help young black men, soul-searching for our own biases, and recognition that we’ve come a long way sound like pretty good ideas to me.

Some of the criticism is about gun rights:  there are people in our society who not only want the right to defend themselves, which has long been guaranteed, but impunity from prosecution if they don’t try to avoid a confrontation and instead “stand their ground,”  which means responding to perceived threat with deadly violence even if there is an alternative.  I suppose if I wanted to own a gun I would want to maximize my impunity as well.  Imagining what would have happened had Trayvon Martin been armed–as the president suggests–is precisely the right way to convince yourself that this is a road we should not want to go down.

A lot of the criticism is coming from people who claim to be color blind (that’s why they think we don’t need that Voting Rights Act, isn’t it?) and resent the president’s explicit discussion of the racial dimensions of this case.  I can’t help but wonder how many of these allegedly color blind people actually voted for a black president.  And how many of them didn’t like that Cheerios commercial with the mixed couple.  I’ve had more than one acquaintance who voted against Obama congratulate themselves and America on his election.  These folks seem convinced that it happened because America didn’t notice he was black.  So when he addresses racial issues as a black person they are deeply offended.

But his election did not happen because America was color blind.  It happened because people preferred what he offered, because they trusted him more, because his opponents were weak, because young people, blacks and latinos turned out, because he is a thoughtful and well-educated person, and because racial prejudice is less absolute than once it was.

My grandmother would never have voted for a black person for anything.  My parents would be delighted he was elected.  But none of them was color blind.  Nor am I.  The president is black.  Get over it.