Divided by color, united by rule of law

I'M WHITE. Trayvon Martin was black. George Zimmerman, a ringer for many of my immigration clients, is Latino. These should all be irrelevant factors. But of course, they're not.

We kid ourselves if we truly believe that America is a melting pot that creates a benign and savory stew that nourishes the pilgrim soul in each of us. America's story has been written by different hands with different perspectives and different desires.

Sometimes, on July 4 for example, we can pretend that this great land of ours is unified and impervious to fracture. We just celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a crucible in which the blood of patriots guaranteed the political survival of "The United States."

But we have always been blessed and cursed by living side by side with "the other," and it is futile to expect that we will ever fully escape the demanding, sometimes brutal requirements of diversity.

The president, in a fit of eloquence, once told us that there is no red America and no blue America. That is debatable. But what he could never deny is that there is a white America and a black America. That single dividing line is greater than the chasm separating man from woman, Catholic from Jew, gay from straight.

Race will never be irrelevant. The epidermal Rashomon will be perpetuated, with blacks seeing the world one way and whites seeing it another, well into the next century, and the next. It is naive to believe otherwise, even as we pray for a post-racial society.

Just look at the letter to the editor that appeared on these pages yesterday, penned by a black reader who chastised my favorite columnist, Stu Bykofsky, for unrealistically believing that white parents could raise a minority child. As a white woman, I fully believe that I could give love and a sense of purpose to a black child. I am offended at the suggestion that I couldn't, or wouldn't want to.

And yet this reader had his or her reasons to suggest that someone with my skin color and experience would be incapable of fortifying a dark-skinned boy against the dangers and challenges of the world.

Many of those who are protesting the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case obviously feel the same way. For them, the only reason that a 17-year-old is dead is because he was targeted by a "white" man (someone as "white" as our president, by the way).

Many others who praised the verdict acquitting George Zimmerman of murder do so, I suspect, because they resent the fact that they themselves have been called racist for worrying about their safety.

Who is to blame either group for bringing their personal experiences, grievances and expectations to this tragic event?

And yet, while divided, there is something that unites us and has - not perfectly but well - protected us for more than 200 centuries. That is the rule of law.

A jury has rendered its decision, finding that under the law as explained to them by experts, Zimmerman was not guilty of murder or manslaughter. We may disagree, as I bitterly disagreed when O.J. Simpson was acquitted and when a woman I still consider a murderer, Casey Anthony, walked free.

But we are obligated to respect the decision of those jurors, because it is only this tenuous legal thread that keeps us from dissolving into a land of Babel.

Contrary to what the race baiters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are saying whenever they can steal a microphone from a legitimate commentator, we are not a country that hunts young black men. We are a country where the conditions of society make life considerably riskier for black youth, where economics and history combine to place them in jeopardy, where their own willingness to self-destruct renders them potential statistics.

But this does not mean that Zimmerman should pay for that. It is only the law and its proper application that would have had the right to condemn Zimmerman to a prison cell.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my father, who went down south to Mississippi during the civil-rights movement and faced a KKK roadblock. A black woman sent me an email saying that she admired dad for "choosing" to do the right thing for racial equality, but that her own father had no "choice" in facing the men in white sheets.

When I read that, I realized that we will never fully be able to get into the minds and hearts of those with different histories.

That's only human.

But the law is different. She must be blind so that the rest of us can see clearly.

It is over. Eric Holder and the people who continue to protest and demand "justice" need to realize that it's staring us in the face.