The Trayvon Martin case has been too galvanizing to let go without comment. The peaceful protests during the aftermath brought out rabid reporters to interview the protesters while I watched on my gym TV, a captive audience for cardio. One reporter asked a woman why she was there, and she replied “Because we are all Trayvon Johnson.” Johnson? Another attendee was at a rally where Martin’s father, Tracey, was speaking. When asked what she thought about the message of Tracey Martin, the protester said, “I am glad she’s here.” The protesters seemed by and large to have a hazy purpose, and little knowledge of the case, sadly. Racial profiling, though, is an experience all of them had in common.

When I was in my 20s, I managed a restaurant in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Most of my employees were black men, and many are still friends although I moved away long ago. Part of the reason we moved West was because New Orleans was such a dangerous city, the murder capital of the U.S. at the time. The Ninth Ward, among other neighborhoods, was forbidden territory for white folk. Many of my employees lived there, and often had no transportation home in the wee hours after the restaurant had closed.  I would give them rides home, although every one of them cautioned me not to actually stop my vehicle. They would hop out of the passenger side as I rolled slowly down a street that looked like a war zone, complete with burning trashcans and human shrapnel. They would urge me to step on it immediately. I was not safe there, a blonde, white woman in crack-dealing country. If we fail to acknowledge how cities have segregated themselves, we are dangerously disingenuous.  Trayvon was too young to know that as a young black man in a hoodie, he was a marked man in that frightened territory of aging white snowbirds.

I was recently in Chicago for a Cubs/Cards game at Wrigley Field, the last old school ball park in the majors besides Fenway. As my best friend and I walked jubilantly down Addison in a sea of blue and red, many fans were looking to buy tickets. One young white man asked, “Are you ladies selling any tickets?” Maybe we weren’t sporting enough fan gear, or our obvious womanhood precluded him from pegging us as baseball fans. “No, but the guy across the street is,” I said, pointing to an enthusiastic black man whose loud scalping voice had caught my attention. “I don’t deal with f****** n*****s,” said the man casually as he disappeared into the tide of Cubs fans. I felt like I’d been gut-punched, and froze in my tracks. I was regrettably rendered speechless. I later told my friend in Tucson, a large, proud black man, about the encounter. His reaction was different from what I expected. “That’s what I like about Chicago,” he said. HL is a well-traveled bon vivant, a man I respect immeasurably for his wisdom. “No one hides behind political correctness there. They are overt about racism. I prefer overt racism over covert any time.”

Is George Zimmerman responsible for the undercurrent of bubbling racist vitriol that boils just beneath (or increasingly above) the surface in this country? He is a product of this mindset, and striking down “Stand Your Ground” or finding Zimmerman guilty of a federal hate crime won’t make millions of closet Zimmermans go away. The pundits on both sides are falling all over themselves trying to articulate a takeaway from all this. Parents can protect their children by painting a more honest picture of the dangers facing their kids; if Martin had been wearing an Izod shirt and khakis, he would be alive today. Of course it’s unfortunate that we must teach assimilationism as a survival skill, but this is the harsh reality of the situation. If I had worn a hoodie and fresh kicks, maybe I could have safely stopped in the Ninth Ward as well. Never bring a banana to a gun fight.