By Rong Xiaoqing
A 17-year-old boy was shot dead by a 28-year-old neighborhood watch volunteer, when the boy was walking back to his father's fiancée's house. The boy was unarmed, and carried only a bag of candy and a can of iced tea. The shooter, who thought the boy looked suspicious, claimed self defense and was initially let go by the police after the incident.
The boy, Trayvon Martin, was black. The skin of the shooter, George Zimmerman, is much lighter. And it happened in Florida, a state that carries a heavy baggage of racial tensions from the past and has kept causing controversy in modern times through its "stand-your-ground" law, which allows someone to fire a gun at another party in a public area if he or she feels their life is threatened.
It is no surprise that this has ignited a national outcry and more division.
After national media outlets picked up the story, which happened in February, thousands of people protested. More than two million people signed an online petition calling for Zimmerman's arrest, which finally happened six weeks after the incident.
The local police chief stepped down. A special prosecutor was appointed. The FBI was brought in. US President Barack Obama demanded a thorough investigation and said "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."
The death of Martin has thus become a new milestone for the civil rights movement. Many journalists, bloggers, activists and politicians asked one question to highlight the racial inequality in this country: "What would happen if Martin were white and Zimmerman were black?"
It's a legitimate question given that statistically, black perpetrators receive harsher sentences than whites for the same offences and black victims are more likely to be ignored than white ones. However, the only problem is Zimmerman is not white. With a white father and Peruvian mother, and looking darker than the average Caucasian, Zimmerman identifies himself as Hispanic on his voter registration card.
Of course, this doesn't change the fact that he shot an unarmed boy and many people just can't understand why he wasn't arrested straight away. But the efforts to portray this as a conflict between black and white are notable. A survey by Newsweek, which found 80 percent of blacks thought the case was racially motivated while only 35 percent of whites agreed, vividly displayed the division.
The questions missing here, though, are what if Zimmerman were Hispanic? What if he and Martin were both black? What if one of them were Hispanic, and the other were Asian, or even one were white, and the other were Asian or Hispanic? The gun control and the "stand-your-ground" issues would still be the talking points. But would the case still become a national sensation as it did? And would anyone outside the immediate community still care at all?
It is true that a lot of US racial baggage in black-white relations still remains. But people from other ethnic communities also often become victims in racial conflicts with whites, with much less spotlight shed on them.
What's more, when less than half of the babies under 3 years old are white in the US now and whites are predicted by some demographers to become a minority by 2050, more racial conflicts are destined to be between people from the black, Hispanic and Asian communities.
What makes things more complicated is that many times, what look like racial conflicts may not be as clear-cut beneath the surface.
Take the 2009 case in which two Chinese restaurants in Manhattan were accused of refusing to deliver food to East Harlem, a largely black neighborhood.
The restaurants were dubbed "racist" by black politicians and it triggered an investigation by the city's Human Rights Commission. But with stories of deliverymen being repeatedly assaulted in some neighborhoods, the workers may be forced to choose between political correctness and their own safety.
It would be much easier for everyone if life was like scenes from Hollywood movies where good guys and bad guys are so clearly labeled. But in the real world it isn't a question of black and white, but of shades of grey.
The author is a New York-based journalist. rong_xiaoqing@hotmail.com
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