It's a veil that dulls us to true atrocities that happen daily. Big events like Katrina and Trayvon rip open the veil, but for some only momentarily. It is as if some voice tells us that it is only a dream.
We go back to sleep.
The system is designed that way--to lull us into sleep and denial. We must stay awake.
It is that veil of privilege that causes sympathy for Paula Deen. She's seen as a Southern Belle who's roots are to blame for loose and racial slurs. We must stay awake and rip the veil to see Paula Deen for the racist her actions indicate she is.
The veil is no different in the case of Trayvon Martin.
There's a reason why Sean Hannity and his band of merry pundits at Fox News put on a nightly Zimmerman love fest.
There's a reason why the woman who posts her jubilation at the Zimmerman verdict as a status also has Paula Deen as her profile picture.
There's a reason why riots would have been covered wall to wall by the mainstream media, but peaceful protests are ignored.
That reason: the veil of white privilege and the voice telling us to go back to sleep; pull the veil back down--it's only a dream.
We must stay wake to not only the injustice that's happened in the case of the not guilty verdict, but also the injustice that allowed George Zimmerman to be a vigilante, stalk his prey, brandish a weapon, and kill Trayvon Martin in cold blood.
In my mind George Zimmerman will always be a racist murderer. May I never lower that veil, because surely the true danger in this acquittal is not the riots we were warned of. It is that there will be more George Zimmermans. It is that we might listen to that voice which compels us to once again pull down that veil and resign that this injustice like so many others was just a dream.
When in all reality it's nothing short of a nightmare.
