The Black Snob wrote about Trayvon Martin. It is one of the most piercing, wonderful pieces that I have ever read.

No Apologizes: On The Killing of Trayvon Martin And Being “Good”

In the tragic murder of Trayvon Martin, there’s no safe place. There’s no real excuse to cling to. None of the usual dismissals work or fit. It’s just bad. Real bad. And sits there and stares at you with it’s cruelty and unfairness and ugliness and says, “Take this.”

Take this load. And pick it up.

Just take it. And accept it. And choke back the lumps in your throat. As it has happened before. And it will happen again. And again you will be told to “take this.”

Take this burden and just accept it as your burden. It’s just “how it is.” You’re all statistics. Take these statistics. And black people get shot everywhere everyday by everyone. Police. Non-police. Crazy people. Bigots. Their parents. Other kids. Just take it. It’s part of your Life In America, Black People. Accept this tragedy and go through the motions of appealing to people’s decency and demanding justice and having protests and press conferences and crying and asking why and demanding answers and then eventually getting that bad dead cold thing that just sits there and says, “Take this.”

Here’s your load. Pick it up.

Pass it along to the children, so they can carry a bit of it too. Let it weigh down on their worlds. Let it rob them of their childhood and innocence. Tell them to take it, so they grow up faster and accept the unfairness in life and just give up. Be cynical and fatalistic. Be cold when it happens to the next person. Or be cold themselves when they do it to another person. And as they rob that person of what was once robbed of themselves and that person asks them why or looks for recourse or retribution or answers, they can stare back unblinking in the shadow of our common oppressors and say, “Take this load and pick it up.”

But I’m sorry. I’m not going to pick up this shit anymore. It’s not mine.

A long, long time ago when I was young my parents told me I had to be the best to make it in this world. Averageness was something only the white and the male could afford and as a black woman, I was neither. You had to take pride in how you dress and how you spoke and how you behaved. You had to be “good,” because good things happen to those who are good and bad things happen to those who are bad. And that’s the lie your parents tell you because no one should tell the truth to you when you’re that young. You really don’t need to know. Otherwise you’d never bother.

Who wants to deal with someone already jaded at age six?

And so I was good. I was so very good. I didn’t curse. I got good grades. I’ve never been in a fight in my life. The one time I got Saturday detention was because I was chronically late for a third period class in an over-crowded school where the only time you could go to your locker was during lunch to switch out books for the second half of the day and my locker was on one end of the crowded school, far from the other.

My teacher didn’t believe me when I told her I couldn’t leave lunch, go to my locker, then wade through the hallway crammed with kids to make it on my class on time.

She told me I was lying. She said she walked it once just to see what I was talking about and timed herself. But since she had to be in class waiting for me and other students, I highly doubted she did that at the height of the lunch rush.

It didn’t matter that I loved my Spanish class and was an A student and never caused trouble and had no reputation for someone who would ever be tardy for anything as I was obsessed with being “good.” She just didn’t believe me. My mother had to get involved and my locker was eventually moved to a place easier for me to navigate to.

I was never late for third period Spanish again. No one apologized.

That same year, the eighth grade, my history teacher moved my seat in the front of the class to the back with a pair of boys who harassed me, teased me and made trouble with me every day. Then, because I’m near-sighted, my vision worsened and I needed new glasses. I couldn’t read the blackboard. I told my teacher of both, the harassment and the inability to see.

He, oddly, agreed I was being harassed, but thought I was “weak” to complain. As for my inability to see, he told me I was lying.

Even though I wore glasses. We got a doctor’s note from my optometrist that I needed new glasses and should sit up front until they were ready.

The teacher suddenly decided everyone in the class could sit where ever they wanted.

He never apologized.

My mother, far more blunt than I, called it what it was. I was black. My teachers were white. The school was mostly white. It was racism.

The rest of this excellent piece is at the link above.