Part 2:

This is Joe Horn's 911 call:



I hadn't heard of this case until it was mentioned on MSNBC's "Up w/ Chris Hayes" (which is a great program, by the way) this weekend. They were discussing "Stand Your Ground" laws in relation to the Trayvon Martin shooting. The state of Texas has a law similar to Florida's, and apparently, many other states that also allow the concealed carrying of firearms. Joe Horn made that 911 call on November 14, 2007 to report a burglary at his neighbor's house. His neighbor was not at home. When the two men who had broken into the home emerged with a bag (filled with jewelery and cash), Joe Horn ignored the repeated pleas of the 911 dispatcher, grabbed his shotgun, and went outside to confront them. He shot them both in the back, killing them. Some people call Joe Horn a hero. He is not a hero. He is not the champion of justice that he imagined himself to be while talking to the dispatcher. He is a killer. He walked out of his home with a lethal weapon intending to kill two men who were not threatening his life or his property (as if property would even be worth someone's life). He shot them as they tried to run away.

When I listen to the end of that recording and hear the quiver in his voice, I wonder if Joe realized in that moment that he had done a terrible thing. Maybe he had just forgotten, in his anger, frustration, and fear that those burglars were people and that life is not a movie. Then, when he saw them on the ground, their blood pooling on the pavement and the instrument of death in his hands, he remembered. He killed two people. But the mind knows to hide such thoughts in places that conscience cannot easily breach. And when even the law concludes that you have done nothing wrong, well, the conscience concedes. I imagine if you asked Joe now about what happened that day, he would say something along the lines of "Damn right I killed those sons of bitches. They had it coming."

I wonder about George Zimmerman, too. How soon did he have the terrible realization that he was a causeless killer? As soon as the gun discharged? Or perhaps in the silence that immediately followed. Whatever happened that night, and I do not claim to know, his choices ultimately took the life of a 17 year old boy. Surely, he must understand this by now. Then again, maybe not. A lot of people fail to understand why Trayvon Martin died.

Part 1:

I don't know anything about "The Hunger Games." I haven't seen the movie; I've never read the books. In fact, I didn't know any of those existed until a week ago. I have made no emotional investment in its story; I have formed no fictional bond with its characters. However I, like anyone else, have read words on a page and found delight in the images they form when a story takes residence in the mind. I have even sometimes placed myself into a story–or someone I know. A novel consumed comes alive in the reader in ways that cannot be foretold by a text inert in its tome. So I understand the disconnect that can result when a book is adapted for film and the casting choices come to fruition on the screen.

And then there's this: Hunger Games Tweets.
It's a blog curating the tweets of people complaining that African-American actors were cast in certain roles for the "Hunger Games" movie. In one sense, this could simply be an interesting social psychological phenomenon. It could be the case that people imagine the characters in the books they read to be white unless the text states explicitly otherwise. (Digression: Given that race is entirely a social construction, it seems reasonable that an author writing a novel that takes place in a fictional society would avoid mapping the racial categories of contemporary Western society onto that world.) We could devise experiments to elucidate more precisely where these demographic lines are drawn and leave each person to draw her own introspective conclusions.

But I think there's something more being revealed here. Some of those tweets are not simply noting a discrepancy between their imagination and the images on the screen. Some of them are describing, in one way or another, an inability to empathize with a black character. Please read the page I've linked above and tell me if I'm overreacting. When you scroll down you may notice that the curator added a caption to one of the tweets that reads in part, "This is why Trayvon Martin is dead." By the time I had arrived at those words, I had already implicitly drawn that connection myself. As I stated on Twitter yesterday, if people can't summon empathy for beloved fictional characters who are black, what chance do we real, complex humans have?