Randi Kreiss

Everything old is new again — even bias

Posted

Social progress took a hit this month, especially for women and African-Americans.

Even as we witness the prominence, political intelligence and the sheer endurance of someone like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, even as we admire the stunning success story of business leaders like Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, we women find ourselves in the cross hairs of a retro debate on contraception and reproductive freedom. It would be tiresome if it weren’t frightening.

Even as we elected the first African-American president, even as blacks have broken barriers in every enterprise and profession, we learned recently about the shocking shooting death of an unarmed African-American youth in a Florida town.

How did the cultural time machine land us back in the ’60s? After witnessing the struggles of the Selma marches and the Montgomery bus boycott, after my African-American high school students ran from the classroom screaming when we heard that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, I believed we would move on to a freer and more enlightened America, in the wake of such raw hatred and bigotry.

Someone explain this to me. Last month, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old boy, was walking home from a store in Sanford, Fla., when he had an encounter with George Zimmerman, an armed neighborhood watchman who shot the boy dead. The case, which we all know would have quietly disappeared in most circumstances, didn’t pass the smell test.

Under great pressure, the local police chief stepped aside. Under even greater pressure, Rick Scott, Florida’s conservative governor, ordered an investigation. People marched; the broken-hearted parents appeared on TV. Finally, last Friday, asked to comment, President Obama said the perfect thing: “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.” Because that’s all that seemed to matter in this tragedy: what the boy looked like.

Also last week, a white Mississippi man was convicted of a hate crime and given life in prison for intentionally running over a black man and then bragging about the murder to a friend on a cell phone call, using the N word in his description of the victim.

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