Fed Up But Faithful: Responding to the Trayvon Travesty
“Truth is I’m tired…” and MAD! But as people of faith, what should we do with our anger? Get your Spiritual Life in this week’s EBONY.com column, “The Faith of the Fed Up“:
Three days have passed since George Zimmerman was acquitted of charges stemming from the death of Trayvon Martin. And I am still livid. The feelings of betrayal and despair brought on by the failure of the American justice system have not subsided. Rallying in Union Square and signing petition after petition to encourage the Department of Justice to bring criminal civil rights violation charges against Zimmerman have not mitigated the hurt that this “not guilty” verdict has stirred up, the message that in America, Michael Vick’s dogs and Plaxico Burress’s thigh are worth more than your entire Black life.
What are we supposed to do with this knowledge?
For some, this verdict caused a fresh injury, altering and redefining their realities forever. For others, it just picked the scab off of a very old wound. Systemic racism has existed in America since long before America’s founding and probably always will. So what are we supposed to do with this anger?
How can we possibly keep the faith knowing that the anger we feel today is actually just the compressed, recycled, inherited anger of generations of our ancestors, unable to rest in peace?
How do you keep the faith knowing that the people whom systemic racism was designed to protect and exalt, invalidate and dismiss our right to the pure outrage that their system has caused?
How do you stay hopeful when you hear news outlets asking questions like “What could Trayvon have done differently?” Or when people find the verdict fair, “cause O.J.,” or when White people suddenly care about dead Black boys in Chicago, if only to avoid any real discussions of institutionalized racism?
Or when George Zimmerman not only gets his gun back and a rubber stamp to kill again, but also gets rewarded for killing an unarmed Black child, to the tune of $300,000?
And when the one person you hoped would finally, finally, stand up and speak out against this grave miscarriage of justice–the first Black president of the United States–doesn’t, but simply side-steps the racism at the heart of this case as if it doesn’t exist, in favor of his typical Black people, take responsibility for yourselves statement, how in the world can we possibly keep the faith?!
Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/wellness-empowerment/the-spiritual-life-the-faith-of-the-fed-up-394#ixzz2ZEAO8FCS