To Be Blind

I had written a long, thoughtful post about the Zimmerman trial.  I discussed emotion verses law, and the importance of the court of public opinion.  I actually thought it was all pretty interesting.  Then I deleted it. 

Why? 

The debate over this verdict is going to continue for a long, long time, and nothing I say truly matters. 

I realized something today.  The internet allows all of us to become Nancy Grave or Bill O'Reilly. We all become political and social commentators.  We all think our opinions should be heard, so we scream them from our keyboards. 

Why? 

I understand frustration.  I let it get the better of me as well.  I have ranted and raved about politics, about civil rights.  I have done my best Nancy Grace impression on plenty of social media platforms.  Then I realized something. 

I tend to react before I think.  I tend to jump to a conclusion before I do my research.  I let my emotions dictate my beliefs, and in the end, I make myself irrelevant.  I make myself look foolish. 

The Treyvon Martin case is a tragedy.  It truly is.  A young man is dead, and the promise of what his life could have been has been snuffed out.  That is all that truly matters to me.  The loss of a life barely begun.  His death revealed so much ugliness and hate that still simmers in this country.  The racial divide that still exists. The fact that, even in this day and age, people cannot just view each other as fellow human beings, breaks my heart. 

I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true.  It breaks my heart that a person is still judged based only on the color of their skin, or their gender, their sexuality, their economic statues, their religion and any other little boxes we can jam people into. 

We are shallow society, focusing only on the surface of a person, instead of focusing on what truly matters. 

We never consider a person's life, their journey, their character, their faith, their heart.  We never consider the parts that truly create who a person is.  A person's skin color is genetics, a person's character is their soul.  Their soul is who the person is, not their lineage.

If, one day, the whole world had lost the ability to see, what would happen?  What would we as a people do if we suddenly lost the ability to judge based solely on a person's physical self?  How would we divide ourselves?  How could we create an us versus them? 

It makes me sick to realize that we, as a people, as a collective race, would still find a way.  We always do.