At least it's not 1955, right? Right...?

As a white person, your Aunt Slugger does occasionally find herself in situations where other white people, assuming that because your Aunt Slugger is white she will "understand," make racist remarks to her. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• "You probably don't want to buy a house in that town. The schools are, shall I say...diverse?" 
• "The blacks can stop complaining now that we have a black guy in the White House." 
• "Is it bad that when you said what the charges were, I knew the defendant was black?"
• "I am glad that Barack Obama isn't acting like some 'homie.'"

These comments come from coworkers, acquaintances, and of course complete strangers. As a white person, this is perhaps the only race-related burden I can claim to bear: unwanted association with racist white people who don't realize they're racist.

Periodically, there will be long stretches of time between these comments, and with the passage of time comes a mellowing of my opinions on exactly how many people are racists. And I think how far we have come as a society. I read books like this one and I think, "Well, at least no one is shipping himself to Philadelphia in a box to escape slavery any more." Progress.

And then there is the story of Emmett Till. Emmett Till was a black kid from Chicago who spoke to a white woman in Mississippi and was beaten beyond recognition to his death because of that. This was in 1955. The white murderers were positively identified by a black witness in the courtroom (which in and of itself was an event, for a black man to openly show anything other than deference to whites). The jury acquitted the defendants after about an hour, with one juror reporting that it would have taken less time had they not taken a break to get soda.

You read that, and you think, "By god, we have come so far." And I am not denying that there has been progress. The George Zimmerman jurors, for example, at least had the decency not to tell us they took an eighteen hour soda break.

But then there is this case. A black defendant, exercising the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida, fired warning shots to keep her abusive husband away. She did not kill her husband. No one died.

And the jury found her guilty in fifteen minutes. They were apparently not in the mood for soda. 

The point of all this is that I find myself once again issuing a

CRITICAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
 
If you do not believe racism still exists, and that blacks and other minorities are not marginalized by our society's laws, policies, and judicial system, you are - and I mean no offense here - clinically brain dead. To be a white person and not understand that white people are afforded certain luxuries, like being statistically less likely to be shot by armed vigilantes, assumed to be bilking the welfare system, or being profiled by law enforcement officials, then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. YOU are the reason a jury acquitted George Zimmerman. YOU are the reason that minorities are still haunted, years later, by Plessy vs. Ferguson and Jim Crow. You are the reason.

And you will probably dismiss your Aunt Slugger as a bleeding heart white liberal. And this is fine. Because at least I am not you.