The Invisible Racial Barrier

The death of black teen Trayvon Martin has resulted in the taboo issue of racial discrimination resurfacing in U.S. society. Although opinions that the verdict is not completely racially related exist, flaws in judicial procedures are also one of the reasons the killer could not be convicted.

The jury ultimately found that neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman, who shot Martin dead, was not guilty, and he was released in court. The verdict caused a wave of demonstrations to sweep the whole of the United States. Members of the public voluntarily took to the streets to protest against the injustice of adjudication and the justice that had not been manifested.

Their anger did not appear from nowhere and is not hard to understand. Reviewing past records, similar cases have happened more than once.

In 1992 white police beat up a black driver named Rodney King, leading to race riots in Los Angeles; in 1999 a black man named Amadou Diallo was shot at 41 times and killed, but the killers were found not guilty, creating a spark for racial disorder. Also shot dead by police, while unarmed, was black teen [Timothy] Thomas from Cincinnati, who was only 19 years old at the time.

Therefore, it can be seen that Martin’s case was not an isolated one. It also reflects that racial discrimination has not completely been erased from the minds of some people.

In the recent Asiana Airlines crash, the U.S. media had quoted a National Transportation Safety Board intern using demeaning spoonerisms as made-up names for the four pilots, in an obvious case of discrimination.

The National Transportation Safety Board, as the leader of the investigation, should most definitely have a fair attitude while investigating the cause of the incident. An intern screwing up may be personal misconduct, but these kinds of inappropriate jokes could only have been made if the person involved was either insensitive toward relations between various races or simply did not care.

It has now been more than half a century since black civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech. The civil rights movement broke the racial barrier, but to this day, blacks and other races have yet to win the respect they deserve and are usually the weaker groups in society, as if there were an invisible racial barrier, separating the various races into their own small groups.

It should be happily noted that in the demonstrations this time, regardless of being white, black, Asian or Hispanic, people have stood up to speak for Martin, using their action to prove that to break the racial barrier and push for reconciliation, the first step must start with yourself.