Our View: Race, Rochester and the death of Trayvon Martin

Mette Greising

Jackie Johnson

Angela Porter

Roger Peterson

W.C. Jordan

Panelists

Mette Greising is a lifelong Rochester resident, a graduate of Mayo High School and the DeVry Institute — Minnesota. She is a project manager at Mayo Clinic and a member of the Rochester Diversity Council's board of directors. She is of Native American ancestry.

Jackie Johnson, a Mississippi native, is a Mayo Clinic employee and former director of the Mayo School of Health Sciences Medical Social Services Graduate Residency Program. She is a graduate of Alcorn State University, a past president of the Rochester NAACP and is a former board member of the Rochester Diversity Council.

Angela Porter of Rochester is a Century High School graduate and a recent graduate of the Howard University Law School.

W.C. Jordan is a North Carolina native and a graduate of North Carolina Central University who came to Rochester in 1997 to be a manager at IBM. He is president of the Rochester chapter of the NAACP.

Roger Peterson is Rochester's chief of police and has been a Rochester resident for 32 years. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

Posted: Friday, August 2, 2013 9:15 pm | Updated: 2:40 pm, Tue Aug 6, 2013.

Was justice done in the George Zimmerman case?

Zimmerman is the Florida man who was accused of second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year. A jury acquitted him of all charges last month, which sparked protests in some cities and a lot of discussion nationwide about whether justice was done.

As President Obama said at the White House several days after the verdict, "When you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn't go away."

We wanted to explore that issue and talk with local people about the impact of the Zimmerman case and what lessons can be learned, so we invited several people to a roundtable conversation at the P-B. We appreciate the willingness of the five people who were able to join us to share their thoughts about topics that are deeply personal and not easy to talk about.

News reporting intern Marion Renault prepared a transcript of the nearly 90-minute conversation that took place July 25. Below is a trimmed-down version that represents the key parts of what we discussed (the complete transcript is

available on PostBulletin.com). Thanks to Marion for her work on this, and for the participation of P-B staffers Eric Atherton, Dwight Boyum, Julian Currie, Christy Blande and publisher Randy Chapman.

I hope you'll take the time to read through this transcript, and then it's your turn — we invite you to join the conversation and share your comments. We'll publish the best of them next week on this page. Send signed emails to letters@postbulletin.com or letters to P.O. Box 6118, Rochester, MN 55903, and we'll follow up.

— Jay Furst, managing editor

What was your reaction to the verdict?

Roger Peterson: "I was not surprised. When you write bad laws, bad things are going to happen. ... We have gotten to that point as a society where we think it's more important to 'stand your ground' than it is to respect life. Florida's law assumes that everybody in that situation, everybody with a gun, is going to make a reasonable decision. Well, the reality is that the reason we have laws is that not everybody is reasonable. I'd be out of business if everybody was reasonable."

W.C. Jordan: "Zimmerman's defense wasn't based on 'stand your ground,' but I think it is a bad law, and it kind of sets a precedent for how things can be in the future."

Jackie Johnson: "I was totally taken off guard by the verdict. At what point did Trayvon have the right to stand his ground? You know, why was it just George Zimmerman who had that right?"

Is there profiling in Rochester?

Mette Greising: "It's a system problem, not a person problem. There's not some police chief saying, 'Let's perpetuate this.' It's something that just evolves on its own because of people's fear and lack of understanding and lack of knowing each other. I think we have a very big communication problem

between the Rochester Police Department and non-white groups in the community."

Angela Porter: "We have a country that was founded on a caste system based on phenotype — black and white — and that has not just been erased. You can't just wave a wand in the form of a law or in the form of any ideals to erase that. So it's not just the police who profile — it's everyone on the street who profiles."

Greising: "Everybody in the police department is human, too. My kids have been on the receiving end of bias and prejudice. We're all people — we all have bias — every single one of us at this table. So to ignore that and to pretend that 'Oh, the police department is great and they would never have any bias' — well, they are people, too."

Peterson: "Even if you could eliminate that personal bias within the police department, the individuals within the police department, we are still and always will be a reflection of our community. And when people call us because there are two black guys standing on the corner, they must be drug dealers, whereas two white guys standing on the corner must be talking about the Vikings game. Is that is a phenomenon that happens in our community? Oh, absolutely. And police officers become complicit in that by virtue of the fact that we take a phone call and we have to respond."

Johnson: "We have to decide every morning when we get up, 'What battle am I going to fight today?' Because it's always a battle for black people. It's always a battle. 'What am I going to overlook, what am I going to walk away from, or what am I going to take on?' And that's every day."

Did the media fairly portray the shooting and trial?

Jordan: "I don't believe so. ... They kind of painted Trayvon as being a thug, and I think that was part of what the defense was using as well. Zimmerman said 'These people always get away.' OK, we make up about 13 percent of the population and we're approaching 60 percent of the prison population, so we don't always get away!"

Porter: "I also think it was unfairly portrayed. ... Rachel Jeantel, the witness on the prosecution side who was culturally different — nobody could understand her — she was the key witness, she should have been the most important, really. She spoke to Trayvon in the moments before he was dead. They really criticized her, and I mean that criticism came from everywhere, white and black, but it especially bothers you and boggles your mind when it comes from people who didn't at all understand her. They really dragged her through the mud."

Greising: "Our system is broken, I'm telling you now, it's broken. There's no justice in the justice system. The attorneys know the biases that are most likely in different people's heads, and they choose the jurors based on that. It's totally normal and allowable to do that, and that's what happens every time. To say that it's not about race is almost like we're deliberately putting blinders on ourselves."

Johnson: "I still come back to the question, can a white person tell me, why don't you see this as being racial? I really want to know, because maybe I'm wrong in looking at it as racial, but I look at this from a lifetime of experience. But maybe I need to change, I don't know. So if you were able to answer that question for me, I'd be so happy."

What role did Zimmerman's race play?

Porter: "I think that a lot of people knew that he was mixed race, that he was not white, not absolutely white. But I think Zimmerman, for all intents and purposes, is white in this scenario, because he's achieved — I'll just use a phrase that one of my professors at Howard actually says a lot — he's achieved 'whiteness.' Whiteness is an idea. No one in this room is stark white. There are ways that you can achieve whiteness. O.J. Simpson is one example, and Beyonce, I don't think black people even consider her as black anymore. Like Oprah, certain people achieve whiteness. And in this scenario, as long as Zimmerman was looking at black as lesser, as a threat, as something foreign, and as long as he's in a position in society where he's empowered by being non-black, I think to a degree he has achieved whiteness."

Peterson: "As I saw it in the media, Zimmerman's ethnicity was actually used as a foil against claims of racism. People were saying 'It wasn't racism, because his mother was from Peru!'"

Greising: "Oh, but that's so short-sighted! Do people think that there's only racism if it's black vs. white? There's so much division between different groups that we put these different categories in: black, white, Native American, Asian, Middle Eastern — all these different categories. It's not just one, we all have these biases."

How important were President Obama's comments about being profiled himself?

Johnson: "I think every black can agree with him — I have had those experiences. I have gotten on an elevator and somebody, a white person, will pull their purse closer to them. Every black can attest to having that experience. The president's comments were late in coming, but the statement that he made, we agreed, I agreed with him."

Porter: "His statement did come late, and I think it came late because there was a political strategy behind it. ... His advisers had time to put their ears to the streets, so to speak, and listen to Twitter and get feedback, that enough of the population was disturbed that he could come out and say those things. But had it just been the black community (that was outraged), I doubt President Obama would have come out there. I don't know if I can blame him as a matter of political strategy, because again, if we're talking about the president of a country of more than just black people, he has to maintain a level of being non-black. He can't be too black."

What can Rochester learn from this tragedy?

Griesing: "I think it's important for us all to think about, especially those of us who have white faces, and can kind of blend in with everyone else, just to ponder these points: You will likely not be followed around a store by security. You will never wonder if you were rudely treated in a store, restaurant or hotel because of your race. You'll likely not be praised as a credit to your people and

described as articulate for being average. You will not suspect much when you hear an apartment you wanted is already rented, and you will likely not have to warn your children about what to do if they encounter police or neighborhood watchmen. I think the white community has to put themselves in the shoes of a non-white person who experiences those things daily. We can't come to any resolution without seeking first to understand."

Jordan: "What do we tell young black men? How do we prepare them for what might happen in the situation that Trayvon was in?... If you have a black and white person on a corner and they see a police officer coming down the street, the white person is going feel a sense of security, and the black person is going to have a sense of fear."

Johnson: "Step one is that employers have to employ people of color, have to employ blacks — not just one, not just two, when you've got 50,000 employees. That's not going to help."

Porter: "I think it's important for us to realize that these things can't really be attacked with legal solutions. We still need to keep the law strong, we need to keep it to the highest standard, but it in and of itself the law is not going to solve these things. We need to look to our institutions, our organizations, make sure that kids are exposed to things like the NAACP, protecting these institutions and looking at ways to improve our society that transcend the law. The law can only do so much."

Johnson: "And one major project that's going on here is the DMC: Do we have any black representation in that at all? Yet it's a community-wide thing."

Porter: "They're supposedly going to create 30,000 jobs and I'm just thinking, 'Where are these people going to come from?' If they come from anywhere outside of Rochester, these issues are going to become more significant and more pressing. We do need to start thinking about Rochester as it transforms into this greater metropolis that it's going to become in 20 years, and we need to really address racial profiling."

Does Rochester's black community need to be more aggressive in seeking leadership roles?

Porter: "We build and we focus internally on instilling that confidence in young people that they will grow up to be like a Sandra Means. But I think right now it's kind of a woeful situation. 'Why even invest my time in a community that doesn't see me as belonging to it?' There is a sense of dismay. It does need to happen on both sides, but I do think as a community, instead of seeking to attain whiteness and disappearing into the community and become non-black ourselves so that we can be in the middle class or upper middle class, we still need to support each other, and think of creative ways to make change. Politics and lawmaking, being on a city council, that is a good way to create change on a level that affects a lot of people." "

Peterson: "I think there there are a lot of opportunities for more allies in this than maybe what is recognized. We have a tendency of looking at it as an adversarial process, but it doesn't need to be adversarial. 'Can you help me understand?' If we start from there, we come to an understanding much quicker than 'You're biased,' 'I'm not,' 'You're biased,' 'I'm not.'" We all have a common desire for civil rights, and we can all be allies."

Griesing: "There's a huge opportunity with neighborhood groups, to help educate our community better. That's really really where problems start, groups that are suspicious of activity and all of these things that get blown out of proportion. I went to a meeting last year that was for neighborhood groups to come so they could learn how to better communicate with different city organizations. It was all middle-aged-to-older white people. ... I know that every neighborhood isn't white, middle-class, older people."

Peterson: "I've been to a lot of those meetings, and yeah, they're all white, they're all middle-aged. That's whose running the neighborhoods.There's been some outreach, but as difficult it is to get people to run for city council, try getting people of color to go to neighborhood association meetings."

Griesing: "How could you blame them, though?"

Johnson: "I think that the majority of white people here in Rochester have not had much interaction with other races. They've only heard and read the negativism that occurs within the different cultures and the different races, and they hear their neighbors say, 'Oh, you don't want to be with them.' But through conversations with other people and interacting with other people, I think that can be the start of a great change here. We just have to keep it up — we have to immerse ourselves with each other. That's how you erase those biases that you've come to know all your life.