The Shooter Was Zimmerman

The hearts of many Jews skipped a beat when the name of the shooter who had killed a black teenager in Florida was given.

What kind of a name is “Zimmerman” (which the Americans pronounce as “Zimmerman,” dropping the initial “t” sound)? Does it “sound Jewish”? And why did people leave comments on websites expressing their hope that “Zimmerman wasn’t Jewish”? And why did the remarkable (and recommended) Jewish website Tabletmag.com express relief with the title “Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s Killer, Not Jewish”? And why did The Washington Post’s long front‐page report, “Who is George Zimmerman?” begin with the words “The shooter was once a Catholic altar boy — with a surname that could have been Jewish”? These are not good days for America. The shooting is a sad reminder of how race, ethnic background and religion continue to threaten the tissue of its society.

It’s a time of never‐ending jubilees. At least once every week, the 150th anniversary of some event related to the American Civil War (1861–1865) is commemorated. Next year it will be 150 years since President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. It is not impossible that a black president would give the speech in a celebratory ceremony, although the president might be a white Mormon; who knows.

America has gone a tremendous distance from the racism of those days. But its progress has been very slow. It needed a hundred years to end the institutionalized racial discrimination in the Southern states. Of course, laws are not enough. By themselves, they don’t change the heart of Man. But they do help.

A Handcuffed Professor

The United States has a black middle class, black billionaires and black CEOs in the bigger Fortune 500 companies. It has a black president; this president has a black attorney general. The American attorney general position combines the authority wielded by the minister of justice, the attorney general and some of the authority of the public security minister in Israel. The presence of a black person in this position is a powerful sign of change.

Nevertheless, most of the blacks in America continue to suspect those who are in charge of enforcing the law. All levels of society, income, education and profession are represented in this majority — from lauded intellectuals to slum inhabitants. The reason is that cops tend to assume that blacks are guilty, without paying attention to their background.

One day, a famous Harvard University professor was arrested and handcuffed at the entrance to his pleasant home because a cop suspected that he was trying to break into it. Less famous blacks fill the prisons in ratios larger than their part in the population. But what happened in Sanford, Fla., not far from Disney World, was not exactly expected. A black teenager was shot by a Hispanic volunteer. 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was innocently walking down the street, a can of cold tea in his hands, a bag of Skittles in his pocket. The teenager was wearing a hoodie because it was raining. 28-year-old George Zimmerman was a part of the neighborhood watch. He was walking with a concealed gun, a legal thing to do in Florida.

Zimmerman informed the police station that he noticed a suspect who was “up to no good.” The police warned him not to get close to the suspect. Their next conversation took place after Zimmerman shot Martin. He was not arrested. The story rolled on slowly: first to the local press, then to Florida’s newspapers and finally, considerably late, to the national press. The New York Times’ analysis found out that black newspapers treated the story more seriously than their white counterparts.

Zimmerman has yet not been arrested.

When Minorities Hate Minorities

Thank God he isn’t Jewish. His mother comes from Peru, in South America. He looks Hispanic. But what about the name “Zimmerman,” for God’s sake?

The very assumption of the Jewish-ness of this name is a part of the not‐always‐successful coexistence between Jews and blacks in America’s big cities. The Jews, indeed, have always tended to be liberal and have made their greatest efforts to support the rights of black people (at least in the cities of the North; the history of the Southern Jews is a bit more complicated). Nevertheless, for various reasons, this relationship has been showing degradation since the end of the 1960s.

Periodic surveys show that blacks tend to have more prejudices about Jews than do other population groups. Indeed, a terrible tragedy, but still less exceptional than one may assume. Occasionally, oh dear, minorities treat each other in the way the majority treats them.

Friction between Jews and blacks has been pushed aside in most places, mostly because the Jews have left the city centers and moved to the suburbs. The tension between blacks and Hispanics (and also blacks and Asians), on the contrary, stands very near to the center of attention.

Apart from the understandable human side, this issue could also have political consequences. It will not be white voices that will reelect Obama. Most of the whites voted against him, even in the year of his great victory, 2008. He needs massive support from blacks (13 percent of the population) and Hispanics (15 percent). If this affair will be characterized as a confrontation between minorities, it will not be good for Obama.

Subtle Racial Implications

The president looked at Trayvon Martin’s photo last week and said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” This proclamation was a bit odd. It would have been better had the president said, “Trayvon could have been the son of any one of us.” Truly, this president has risen thanks to the freshness of his rhetoric, but he tends to stumble whenever he improvises. For that reason he seldom improvises and prefers a teleprompter.

Constantly seeking attention, Newt Gingrich furiously condemned the president. “Disgraceful,” he said, and proclaimed that the president would not have minded if a white teenager had been killed.

Gingrich will not be the next president of the United States, nor even his party’s presidential nominee. But he has sent a strong indication of what is about to come upon us during the following months: an electoral campaign interwoven with subtle, or not‐so‐subtle, racial implications. It’s time to restore America to the whites, or so it will be implied.

How many years have gone by? A hundred and fifty? It will probably be many more years before America will develop true colorblindness. Therefore, what luck that Zimmerman is tan!