This morning, I read the blog of a local Houston news anchor, Isaiah Carey. Please take a moment to read the blog entitled OBAMA T-SHIRT GETS A WOMAN BEAT DOWN!
Once I got over the initial anger, the entire thing made me reflect, or more accurately, remember...
I was sitting in my high school AP Psychology class, the only sophomore in a class full of seniors. Due to my love of learning and desire to move at lightning speed, I was rarely in classes with kids my own age. Sitting to my left was the star of the high school baseball team, a very atheletic, good looking, wealthy white kid. I always understood that he was attracted to me. He was not my type, more due to his arrogance, than his features. I could tell that he wanted to get through to me somehow, but did not know how to penetrate the "wall" between us. One day, he figured out.
"Hey Crystal, you wanna hear a joke?"
"What Todd?"
"What do you call it when a black woman has four abortions?"
I did not know what to expect. Something in me knew that I was about to experience a great injustice. I couldn't open my mouth.
"Crime control!" Gaffaw, gaffaw!!!
I got up from the right side of my desk (the only means of escape) and slowly walked towards him. He looked at me, not expecting me to turn towards him. In fact, I did not expect it. I turned to him and struck him so hard (far beyond the capabilities of my 5'1", 98 lb. high school frame) that he and his desk became air borne and then crashed to the ground on its side.
My very pretty, young, and white teacher came over and, interestingly enough, asked Todd, "What did you do to Crystal?!?". I guess my attentiveness in class paired with my willingness to always help made her understand that violence was outside of my normal realm of thought. He retold the joke and demanded that I be sent to my Assistant Principle's office. She told him that he was to apologize, shut up, and not mention it any further. She added that she was sure that his "jock buddies" would find plenty humor in the fact that little Crystal knocked him down.
I always wondered if it was the fact that she was a psychology teacher that caused her to react the way that she did. Did she understand the magnitude of the injustice? By law, I had assaulted him, but by moral code I raged a just war.
Why does it seem so often that the law and justice do not coincide? Legal and moral right so frequently rest on opposite sides of the spectrum...
I would like to know my sisters' opinions on the Barack Obama shirt situation and my own high school experience.
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