Desert Dancer, Thanks for all the great links you've been providing throughout this thread. I followed your excellent link (just above), and found another bit that I think is SO "right-on-the-money":
"These conversations are difficult, because there is a lot of intensity and emotion involved here. I often find myself having to explain relatively simple things to people in the comments section because they don't really want to have an honest conversation, they want to delegitimize the claim of racism as much as possible." [BF mine.]

This strikes me as a "great truth". We see it happening here on not just this, but many Mudcat thread(s) all the time -- and on many other subjects -- and in many other places as well, of course. All of us (with a few very rare exceptions) tend to "take in"/remember/misremember the details/"facts" that support our mindset(s) -- and to not notice/misunderstand/forget those that don't. Seems to be human nature, unfortunately...

I think the best we can do is try to be aware of our biases and try to factor them in when we are passing judgement on others (and ourselves), but this is not easy for anyone -- and for some, nearly (if not completely) impossible.

I think if I had the misfortune to be "King of the World", I would order all schools to teach this to their students; maybe have something they'd recite every day -- instead of prayers or the pledge of allegiance...

Anyway, to continue; here's the rest of the paragraph I quoted above, which (IMHO) is also extremely perceptive:
"Also too, we just don't have a great vocabulary. Everyone uses the word "racism" right away. But people can act in prejudice without being bigots." [again, BF mine.]

Finally, just wanted to point out that anyone who followed DD's various links earlier in this thread (like this one: NY Times news report: Justice Department investigation is sought in Florida teen) and saw a photo of Mr Zimmerman (scroll down a bit) would not be all that surprised to hear that Mr Z is Hispanic.