Trayvon Martin and racism in America

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot to death while walking to a convenience store in his Florida neighborhood to buy candy. /Family photo

Speaking out about race in America is dangerous: perilous for political careers, fracturing for friendships, inviting violence from extremists.

I have felt barely safe writing about racism in America. While being a white man married to an African-American comes with its own dangers, it's safe for people to assume I am not racist. While raised in a predominantly white, middle class town, I've experienced racism against African-Americans through the eyes of my wife and daughters. I've seen it when my loved ones react to racist incidents with a toxic brew of anger, isolation, disgust and despair.

The Trayvon Martin killing in Florida is the latest national reminder that racism is an enduring legacy of the American experience. Sadly, the widespread collective distress over George Zimmerman's acquittal in Trayvon's killing shows more time will have to pass before Americans reach the Promised Land that Martin Luther King Jr. envisioned 45 years ago.

Eliciting howls of protest from his political adversaries, President Obama recently said African-Americans look at Trayvon's killing and the Zimmerman verdict "through a set of experiences and history that doesn't go away." That's polite.

In my unique position as a journalist and spouse of an African-American, I can afford to be less polite.

• Trayvon Martin was racially profiled and his killing was a crime. If the roles were reversed, if Trayvon was a black adult who was stalking a Hispanic teenager while armed with a gun after the police had told him to stop, the vast majority of Americans know the Florida verdict would have been far different.
• Paula Dean is a racist. There's a reason why "nigger" is considered so vile that it gets "X-word" treatment in most public discourse, and its use can rarely be justified. Since the founding of the United States, this word has symbolized and reinforced the attempt to inflict subhuman status on African-Americans and to cast them as unworthy of equal citizenship. My wife has been called a nigger several times; in every instance, the speaker was attempting to dehumanize, denigrate, and strike the hideous historical chords of enslavement and discrimination. Imagine your race of Americans enduring 400 years of injustice, racially motivated slaughter, and political and economic disenfranchisement. Now imagine if there was one word that could make those centuries of torment pass before your eyes in an instant.
• Slavery and the ethnic animosity that sustains it have enduring influences on any society. The United States is one of the great beauties in the history of human civilization, but Americans are finding out how long it takes for a nation to heal the ugly wounds created when an entire race of people are enslaved.

Protective headgear for MLB pitchers long overdue

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher JA Happ clutches his head after being struck in the head with a line drive on May 7, 2013, suffering a fractured skull. /AP photo

One of the allures of baseball is you can see hundreds of games and still expect to see something you've never seen before the next time you walk into a ballpark. One play I hope to never see starts with the pitcher getting hit in the head with a batter's 100 mph line drive.

In a game obsessed with statistics, probabilities and superstition, May 7 has become a bad day to pitch in Major League Baseball.

This year on May 7, Toronto Blue Jays pitcher JA Happ was struck in the side of the head and suffered a fractured skull. A former season strikeout leader at the highest level of the minor leagues and promising young starter, Happ is hoping to return to a Major League mound by August.

On May 7, 1957, Cleveland Indians pitcher Herb Score was struck in the face with a line drive, suffering a broken nose and swollen retina. Score, who had led the major leagues in strikeouts in his Rookie of the Year season in 1955 and in 1956, was never the same.

There's only a handful of ways for baseball players to suffer serious head injuries, chief among them blunt force trauma from a batted ball or pitched ball. Protective helmets have been mandated for major league batters for nearly half a century and MLB is introducing a significantly upgraded helmet. Pitcher headgear hasn't changed since the sandy depths of time.

Note to purists and pitchers resistant to change: Baseball batters and pitchers have been vying to gain advantage over each other for 150 years. Batters are gearing up with body armor literally head-to-toe, which can only boost their comfort level at the plate and performance. Ironically, pitchers are being crushed in an arms race.

MLB reportedly has eight companies trying to develop protective headgear for pitchers. I hope they develop the gear soon. With at least three major league pitchers suffering serious head injuries from line drives in less than a year, the odds of seeing this play appear to be going up. And I'll think twice about going to ballpark on May 7.

Cleveland Indians pitcher Herb Score clutches his head on May 7, 1957, after being hit in the face with a line drive, suffering a broken nose and swollen retina. The Rookie of the Year and two-time season strikeout king was never the same and never entered the Hall of Fame. /Image via canthavetoomanycards.blogspot.com