If my greatest hope could be realized it would be that AMERICANS become AMERICANS first and each of us be proud of our varied heritage. Except for our Native American brothers and sisters, we are all from "somewhere else". Each of us with a story to tell, each from a country that has a rich heritage of both good and evil. Until we, as AMERICANS, stop seeing in color and or black and white, and see fellow AMERICANS first we will continue to have racial conflict.
It seems not to matter that Zimmerman's father is a white American (which means his ancestors came from another country and perhaps another ethnticity as long as the skin color was white) and his mother is Peruvian which, like America has a rich cultural background -- Amerindians 45%, Mestizos 37%, Whites 15%, Asian Peruvians and Afro-Peruvians 3%.
So IF race and/or ethnicity is "the" issue, then consider that in reality it was a young Black man (Martin) and an older young Latino man (Zimmerman) because this IS the United States of America and the United States Census uses the ethnonym Hispanic or Latino to refer to "a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race.
It seems to me that all AMERICANS should realize that what happened was a sad day for America. But then again what about the multitude of youth killed each year by gangs, because of drugs, hate crimes, etc. Not to mention the thousands of innocents that lose their lives before they are born. All are AMERICAN TRAGEDIES that have a story that deserves to be heard. |