I was set to write about health reform this morning. I’ll come back to that. I want to take a personal moment now to note something else. Many people have written brilliantly about the Trayvon Martin case, especially Ta-Nehisi Coates over at the Atlantic. I thought President Obama’s humane comments were doubly powerful because of their humane restraint and their obvious truth. I live in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. Trayvon Martin bears some superficial resemblance to the kids who use my own driveway basketball hoop.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around what was in George Zimmerman’s head that led him to shoot a young high school student who posed zero threat to anyone. I wonder if something happened to him that led him to this behavior. Zimmerman doesn’t strike me as an evil person. His life story does seem to contain more than the usual dollop of struggle and trouble: minor scrapes with the law, credit card and job problems, etc. The Trayvon Martin case wasn’t the first time Zimmerman was involved in impulsive violence committed under ambiguous circumstances. I wish Zimmerman had gotten whatever help he needed to have found a better path to personal accomplishment and recognition than to seek violent confrontations with real or imagined criminals.
When I was not much older than Trayvon Martin, I was the victim of a scary beating in the New York subway. I was the victim of other crimes, as well. Around the same time, in the bad old days of high-crime New York, my gentle cousin was beaten to death by two teenage burglars he surprised in his home.
For too many of my young adult years, I walked around with a lot of anger. Because the perpetrators of these crimes were African-American, my anger included definite, albeit implicit and unarticulated racial overlays.When one carries such feelings of fearful grievance and humiliation, the mix is potentially explosive. I know something of the stereotype-reflexive flinch some people experience at the sight of a young black man buying Skittles and wearing a hoodie.
Nothing ever exploded in my life, nothing even close. And at some point, I noticed that I wasn’t walking around with the same anger anymore. I no longer embraced or savored a sense of my own victimization. The scars had gradually healed, mainly because the rest of my life included much support and gratification.
I never got much help from the medical care system. Not long after the original subway incident, I visited my doctor with the complaint that I was having headaches. It’s only a psychological thing, he assured me. On my first job, I visited my HMO, and was referred to a group therapy intervention. I never went. Our health care system is now more attentive to these issues.
I still worry about people who fall through the cracks—not to mention the consequences for others when people carry such pain and fear around with them. My story probably has nothing to do with George Zimmerman’s. If it did, though, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised.
(HAP)
