Talking about Trayvon at church

On Sunday I visited a church that's majority white but not overwhelmingly so. After worship, I stuck around for a planned conversation about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Here the demographics were flipped: a slight majority of African Americans.

But the white folks did their share of the talking. Some of them seemed to want to limit the conversation to the proceedings of this particular court case, despite the pastor's invitation to express feelings on related issues. They did listen patiently, for the most part, as black congregants described their own experiences of being harrassed by the police, of having the talk with their sons, of feeling a constant pressure to be better than good. But then it was their turn, and they brought things back to the self-defense laws in question and the fact that the jurors were privy to more information than the rest of us.

I was impressed that the church was having the conversation. Not so much with the way some white congregants engaged it. It seemed like they were listening but not really hearing the depth of hurt and fear that others were expressing.