Kelly said she's leaning in, waiting to hear. She might not have been talking straight to me, but since Kelly is my race red pill, I heard her, anyway. I didn't want to. It's a week from BlogHer '13 and I had trouble with my daughter today and I have a million other excuses for why I don't want to talk about Trayvon Martin, but I hear you, Kelly, sometimes you have to talk about things that just piss you off because they are important.

I had just left a soccer match on Saturday night and was standing in line for the shuttle when I heard about the Trayvon Martin verdict. The older couple behind me were clearly trial junkies, as the woman started in on everyone from O.J. to Casey Anthony, and apparently she'd been following Trayvon, too. "Not enough evidence," she said. "I knew they wouldn't convict him."

I felt my color rising. I wished I'd watched the trial so I could speak intelligently, but I've felt this entire time like I didn't have to watch the trial to be pissed off. Trayvon Martin was walking home unarmed with candy and a nonalcoholic drink. George Zimmerman was packing heat and disregarded 911 telling him to stay away. The fact that he called 911 on a kid carrying candy is troubling enough. That he followed Trayvon with a gun? Where did this all go so badly off the rails?

With the law. 

I've thought and thought about this since it all went down, and the problem is with the culture that writes the laws. The laws are too vague. The laws may ignore common sense and ethics. And the laws and the court of public opinion have always been against the black man. (I am aware that George Zimmerman isn't white. Don't care.)

Think I'm wrong? Watch the local news in any city for five nights and tell me how many times an assailant or thief was described as a black man, then tell me how many black men actually live in that city. I don't watch the Kansas City news that often, but every damn time I SWEAR that I watch the news, a black man has gotten away with something! How many black PEOPLE are there in Kansas City?

White alone, percent, 2010 (a)	59.2%	82.8%
	Black or African American alone, percent, 2010 (a)	29.9%	11.6%
	American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.5%	0.5%
	Asian alone, percent, 2010 (a)	2.5%	1.6%
	Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent, 2010 (a)	0.2%	0.1%
	Two or More Races, percent, 2010	3.2%	2.1%
	Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010 (b)	10.0%	3.5%
	White alone, not Hispanic or Latino, percent, 2010	54.9%	81.0%

I'm guessing about half of those black people are female. Those black people sure are busy!

Or are we just more worried about what they are doing than what all the other people are doing when it comes to crime? Other people commit crimes -- they just don't get covered as often on the news. 

Now, on the flip side, how often do we hear about white people who have been kidnapped versus black people? 

In all my reading, the person who has summed up my malcontent best is Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic:

We have spent much of this year outlining the ways in which American policy has placed black people outside of the law. We are now being told that after having pursued such policies for 200 years, after codifying violence in slavery, after a people conceived in mass rape, after permitting the disenfranchisement of black people through violence, after Draft riots, after white-lines, white leagues, and red shirts, after terrorism, after standing aside for the better reduction of Rosewoodand the improvement of Tulsa, after the coup d'etat in Wilmington, after Airport Homes and Cicero, after Ossian Sweet, after Arthur Lee McDuffie, after Anthony Baez, Amadou Diallo and Eleanor Bumpers, after Kathryn Johnston and the Danziger Bridge, that there are no ill effects, that we are pure, that we are just, that we are clean. Our sense of self is incredible. We believe ourselves to have inherited all of Jefferson's love of freedom, but none of his affection for white supremacy.

You should not be troubled that George Zimmerman "got away" with the killing of Trayvon Martin, you should be troubled that you live in a country that ensures that Trayvon Martin will happen. 

And, so, Kelly, that's where this white lady stands. Am I pissed at George Zimmerman? Yeah, I am. But I'm more pissed that anyone could feel comfortable stalking an unarmed minor because he was black and wearing a hoodie.  (Emphasis mine)

Zimmerman

He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.

Dispatcher

How old would you say he looks?

Zimmerman

He's got button on his shirt, late teens.

Dispatcher

Late teens. Ok.

Zimmerman

Somethings wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out, he's got something in his hands, I don't know what his deal is.

Dispatcher

Just let me know if he does anything, ok?

Zimmerman

(unclear) See if you can get an officer over here.

Dispatcher

Yeah we've got someone on the way, just let me know if this guy does anything else.

Zimmerman

Okay. These (expletive) they always get away. Yep. When you come to the clubhouse you come straight in and make a left. Actually you would go past the clubhouse.

To me that "and he's a black male" sounds a lot like Paula Deen's "of course" when asked if she'd ever used the n-word before. "And he's a black male" -- as though that's all it takes to be a criminal. "Of course" -- as though using a racial epithet is a normal and acceptable thing to do. "It doesn't violate the law" -- once covered slavery. Listen, the law is just what's written down at the time. People write the laws, and society dictates whether those laws are left to stand or rewritten. 

Clearly there's a huge gap between the law and right/wrong in the Trayvon Martin case, and that really sucks. It's a problem so huge I don't know where to start. Unlike women's health rights, there's no concrete one law to point to, to say "change this and we'll be safe." The overarching climate that made it defensible somehow in a Florida court of law to clearly single out a kid because he's a black male who's staring is the thing that needs to change, and it's so nebulous it's hard to know where to start. 

So I start in my neighborhood. I start with my daughter. I start with the people I know. I started with the older couple in line behind me at the soccer match. I told them I thought the law and what was right were two completely different things. The older couple didn't see the forest for the trees, or maybe it wasn't a Saturday-night conversation. But I'll keep trying. I don't know how much influence I have on my blog or my social media, but I'll keep trying. I'm not ignoring it. I'm trying to figure out where the fuck to start.

But I'm leaning in. And you know what? I think the fact the Trayvon Martin case got as covered as it did in the media is maybe a good thing. How many trials do we see on the national news for black kids getting shot? Let's keep the conversation going.

I interrupt a swiftly-turning-boring conversation about raccoons (you're right, I should just take the birdfeeders in, even though that means the racoon won, dammit) to turn to what blew up the Internet yesterday and how it relates to other conversations I've been involved in that are way, way more important than raccoons.

So yesterday there was an incident with a ridiculous JC Penney t-shirt about girls being too pretty to do their own homework and giving it to their brothers. Shannon did a great job covering it at BlogHer, and Liz Gumbinner -- who works as an advertising exec on Madison Avenue -- said better than I could say -- because she works as an advertising exec on Madison Avenue -- what I believe about capitalism and also about racism and sexism. She wrote:

Messages are sexist because people are sexist.

Messages are sexist because people are lazy. They fall back on stereotypes because it’s easy to get a laugh, easy to get an idea approved, easy to move onto the next thing on your to-do list.

I know because I’ve done it.

Liz wasn't talking about racism, she was talking about sexism, but it strikes me that all isms are isms because they are buried so deeply in our unconscious that we don't even realize we are doing it.That's why it's so hard to eradicate. It's one thing if someone says something sexist or racist on purpose, but it's something entirely different and so much more dangerous if the person saying it doesn't even realize he or she is doing it. The power humans have to believe their truths is strong. We'll die for our truths. It's very difficult for us to change our truths. It takes generations of conversations.

Liz's comments about the t-shirts and how she has caught herself making sexist jokes struck a nerve with me, because it reminded me of something I commented on Kelly Wickham's race post a week or two ago about my own growth when it comes to my awareness of cultural attitudes about race. I wrote:

The defensiveness comes from not realizing it doesn’t matter if you didn’t mean to hurt someone with your thinking and actions and not realizing it doesn’t make you an evil person, but it does make you unaware. And when you’re unaware, you participate in institutional racism without realizing it. And when you do that, you teach others by your example that it’s okay.

I used to tell my daughter there was no color until I realized it was total bullshit. There are colors, we have history, and the world is not perfect yet nor will it probably ever be — which is why race is such a dominant theme in science fiction. She knew there were colors — she’s not blind. She doesn’t care, nor does she mention it in descriptions, which is more than I could say for myself until I started noticing I did it. I still catch myself doing it. Here’s an example.

Kelly describes herself as a tall woman with icy looking eyes.
We already know Kelly is black.

You just met Kelly. How do you describe her so someone can find her in the crowd?

a) Kelly is a tall woman with curly hair.
b) Kelly is a tall black woman with curly hair.

Now, you’re describing me so someone can find me in the crowd.

a) Rita is a blond woman with blue eyes.
b) Rita is a white woman with blond hair.

(I know for a fact there are women who are not white with blond hair.)

I almost never hear anyone describe a white woman as a white woman. I almost always hear anyone who’s not white described by their race.

This is institutional racism, making the “other” before we even meet someone. It’s not necessarily intentional, but look what we’ve just done with what to us is an innocent description. This is the level of blindness white people have, and it’s why we’re getting nowhere fast trying to change things.

I watched Battlestar Galactica a while back and was at first shocked that both men and women in exec roles were referred to as “sir.” I spent about three days thinking about it. Finally, I decided I loved it, because it took gender out of a title of respect so it could apply unilaterally without indicating gender. But it took me three days to figure it out because the idea that men are usually in the position of authority is so ingrained in my mental model that I had to question what the word “sir” really meant.

When you start thinking about race in that context, it becomes much easier — for me — to talk about it. Am I evil? No. Do I need to question how the world works? YES YES YES.

At my Own Your Beauty panel at BlogHer, several white women talked about becoming invisible after they passed a certain age. It was surprising to them when they realized ads were no longer being targeted to them, that they saw no one representing their age group for anything other than vitamins and denture cream. And it was so surprising to no longer be targeted because they had grown accustomed to being the norm, to being what everyone else is supposed to be like: white and young.

When you're in the majority, you don't see the isms.

When you're plugged into the matrix, all you see is the matrix.

We are plugged into sexism and racism so completely that we have no idea we're even participating in it.

Kelly wrote recently about a comment her secretary made to her about her hair looking more professional when she straightened it:

It was one comment from one person, but the damage that this way of thinking does to young girls who are constantly trying to look like they fit in with white hair styles betrayed to me what she really thought. I’m no less professional because of my hair, but if my secretary thought that (and felt comfortable enough to say it to me) then what about the parents of my students? I pray to God that they don’t see me as less accomplished or proficient or respected in my job just because of the natural way in which I wear my hair.

And yes. I totally DID just make that all about hair.

I see these things as being connected, because they are all unconscious manifestations of institutional sexism and racism that we have to fight to make ourselves aware of. We have to fight to see the racism and sexism in our own thinking, correct it, call it out, teach our kids it is wrong and have those conversations over and over for however many generations it takes to make a change, to remove male connotations from words that really mean respect and white connotations from what someone's hair should look like and stop our culture's ridiculous obsession with young white women.

It's hard to look at yourself and realize you're part of the problem. It makes you feel icky and guilty and sad -- I know -- I've been there. I got past it by realizing it wasn't conscious but that I could consciously make a decision to stop. I could unlearn my truths, change them for the better, and I could teach my new truths to my daughter.

We can change it, but we have to vote with our dollars. This is capitalism. We have to stop voting for politicians who ignore sexism and racism, we have to stop listening to radio shows that spew hate, we have to stop buying Rolling Stone or whatever magazine it is when some female celebrity is naked on the cover, we have to refuse to let our young girls wear anything broadcast across their butts, we have to demand to be taken seriously and we have to allow change to be reflected in our media, in our programming and most importantly, in our schools.

Because it's not okay.

And the theme is school kids who can't afford stuff.

I'm doing publicity for a local performance of The Nutcracker. One of my jobs is to call metro schools and ask if they'd be interested in bringing their kids in for field trips (some of the performances are designated for schools and held during the school day). When I called the KCMO school district a few weeks ago, the very nice woman there told me so many of the kids are on the reduced or free lunch program they probably couldn't afford the $4 ticket price. Considering I had to send $5 to school with the little angel last week so she could eat a doughnut, this statement almost made my head pop off with the injustice of it all.

I'd been rolling the whole Nutcracker thing around in my head for some time when I saw Kelly Wickham's post about her kids (she's a vice principal of a school) not being able to carry big purses or backpacks but not being able to afford yet another purse for their lady things.

I'm going to sort through my closet to find a few small purses to send Kelly's girls so they can carry their tampons with dignity through the halls of their big-purse-and-backpack-banning school. If you're decluttering this year, please think about throwing a few tiny purses in a box and mailing them to Kelly. The P.O. box is in the link above.

And I'm going to ask you to consider approaching your employers or yourselves or your families about sponsoring a few KCMO school kids to see a very inexpensive ballet production this holiday season.  If you donate above $50, your name will appear in the program (I have details about levels of sponsorship for companies and individuals), but also, if you donate anything, we can designate it for KCMO kids if we get enough to bus in a few classes.