In Which I Hide in my House

Warning: political.

A lot of people here pay more attention to U.S. news than I do, which means I often get questions about stuff which I am unaware happened.  Or about stuff that I just don't care that much about, e.g. Obama's visit.  Today, I am dreading questions about the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial.  A bunch of people who know more about the legal system than I do have said that based on the investigation, the law, and the actions of the prosecution, the jury didn't really have grounds to convict.  I defer to their expertise, but that's not going to make explaining this better.

A lot of my students want to study in the states.  A lot of my students are sweet and earnest.  The one I think would most benefit from foreign study runs everywhere and always sits in the front, types frantically whenever I say anything he can test out for himself, and has a big grin when his programs work.   He is also the driving force behind the optional Python class I taught this semester.  The point is, I don't want to tell him, or any of my students, or my colleagues, or even the person I don't actually know who called me early this morning to ask if he could come to my home and have me fix his modem (umm, no?) that yes, in the U.S. it is likely that they will be profiled as poor, under-educated, and/or (violently) criminal based on their skin, and in some places it is defensibly legal for them to be followed around and shot by angry white people with guns.

A friend who is braver than I is doing some Kiswahili cramming to be able to explain the verdict to his students today.  Other volunteers may still be claiming that racism is not a problem in the U.S., because some people do that.  Me, I am hiding in my house.