IowaforHuckabee wrote:
TVV, I am so sorry that this is upsetting you so much. I am sure you are not the only one.
Thanks very much, Iowa, for your thoughtful response. Although I started this thread blaring away with my feelings on this issue, I guess I really wanted to talk about the issue. I really appreciate you trying to understand.
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This is not the first, nor will it be the last run for the President where the current President gets criticized relentlessly by the candidates, regardless of the party in power, or his color. Think back to Bush, Clinton, etc.
You are right. And honestly, I was very protective of President Bush in that I hated the way that the left treated him. I did not like the intense personal hatred that many had toward President Clinton. I think I really don't like it when I think people are almost obsessed with a personal dislike of a leader to the point where it almost blinds them. I didn't like it when I saw that against any of these guys.
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I have a lot of different feelings about all of this and, as has been said, don't know all of the facts, so it is hard to know what really happened. I agree that not enough was done at the time to determine who was at fault. Although, what I am about to write is a mixed up mess of thoughts (I am not as good of a writer as yourself or many others on this board), I will try to convey the feelings of this white, middle-aged mama of four, since you have asked.
You're a great writer ... and you are right in that no one completely knows what happened except for the two individuals, one of whom is now deceased. I think this is why many feel it is so urgent that a full and competent legal process determines exactly what happened and leaves no piece of evidence untouched.
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Regardless of whether he was a victim of prejudice or died as the result of bad choices, my heart breaks for the family and friends of this young man.
Amen. My heart breaks for the survivors for every crime victim, but especially for children, who have their whole lives in front of them, who are taken away by violent crime. I don't personally know enough to think that he was killed "because he was black." I haven't even been focused on the race angle of the shooting itself. My focus is that he was unarmed and that he was not doing anything wrong. He was in a place where he had a right to be, was minding his business and ran into a strange man who was not a police officer, was not wearing a uniform and who was following him. I can imagine that if I were in his position and saw a strange dude following me, I might think that he was a child predator or something. Why is this guy following me around and driving behind me in his car??
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Because of the color of each involved and the media coverage, this has become a national race issue.
We really need to use this as an opportunity to come together instead of an excuse to divide ourselves again. And I don't think that this needs to be an issue of division. It probably doesn't help when divisive people take center stage and cause further division just by their very presence. But we all need to be invested in ensuring that any situation in which an American is killed for no reason does not happen. The demographics should not matter. We need to get to the point where we care about the life of every American, whether they are from our ethnic group or not, and care that the Justice and Law Enforcement processes treat every person's life with equal importance. I think that many Americans do feel this way.
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Because of the underlying issue of race in this country, these crimes immediately stir up history and past feelings that are still raw despite decades of attempts to heal. Al Sharpton jumps in and others like him and try to make it their own battle against injustice as they have in the past and it divides our nation once again (not that the healing has ever completely occurred).
This is what I was alluding to, in part, when I mentioned that when divisive people get involved, more hostity often arises.
I've said a couple of times that I don't view race as the primary driver necessarily in the shooting itself. I will be honest, however in saying that I have a very hard time imagining that the law enforcement response would have seemed so disinterested in getting to the bottom of the situation if Trayvon Martin had been a white kid. I may be wrong but I just couldn't imagine the situation occurring where, in this scenario, the police would not bother finding out the child's identity, would take the shooter's word that it was a case of self-defense, would fail to determine whether or not the shooter was on a controlled substance at the time of the shooting, would refuse to release the 911 calls and would insist that there was no evidence to dispute the shooter's testimony even as multiple witnesses tried to contact police to offer their contradictory testimony. I consider you all friends and I'm being honest and transparent with you when I say this, so please take this in that spirit. But I just can't imagine the case having been handled so cavalierly for as long as it was handled that way in the other scenario.
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I want to say to them, please do not place back on that invisible wall the bricks that have been torn down over the years by making every issue where people of color are involved, a "racial" issue. We know we cannot feel the pain or fear that is felt, we know that we have not had to experience what those who are minorities have had to, we know that those who came before us allowed hate and prejudice to treat others as not equal (and some of our generation sadly still do); but don't turn us away when we try to understand. And please do not keep making it an issue when it is not.
And I say "amen" to what you are saying and will say it also. I don't believe in viewing the world as "us" versus "them." We're an American family. We stand together or fall together. We tend to sometimes retreat back to our historical boundaries. But we can't stay there. And this shouldn't be an issue where we take sides of being with "us" or against "them." I think that this is something that everyone can relate to in one way or another. I also think that everyone has an ability to understand what it's like, to one degree or another, to be prejudged.
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Please do not think that the majority of Americans of any race do not feel the pain of this child's parents and loved ones. And if indeed, this death is found to be a result of prejudice vs. self-defense, then allow all of us, not just those in the black community, to mourn and feel the pain of such a sad and unfair loss.
And try to understand that it may not just be politics that drives someone in the national spotlight to say to someone who they feel is doing so, put the brick down and stop adding to the divide.
I don't think that most Americans don't feel the pain or sympathize. I would just like to see no one use this situation for political gain or as a means of attacking each other. It just seems to cheapen the pain caused by this tragic loss of this young man.