In this segment I look at the big story of the week in the United States: the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
This trial has captured the attention of the nation, because it so perfectly represents a bigger, more gnarly issue that is still very much in play our society: race relations.
It is said that slavery is the Original Sin of the United States. It is the source of infinite human suffering: 12 million people and their descendants enslaved for two centuries, the fighting of a civil war that cost the lives of two percent of the adult population, a hundred years of Jim Crow laws where African-Americans were effectively denied citizenship.
Although all legal barriers to racial equality were finally abolished through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, racism remains a feature of the deeper premodern strata of development that are alive in every one of us.
Predictably conservatives (amber altitude) and liberals (green altitude) have competing storylines on the Zimmerman – Martin case, and are bitterly divided on the verdict of “not guilty”. Meanwhile the modern (orange altitude) legal system tries to find a truth that is blind to all prejudices.
Nobody gets it 100% right, of course, but the contention between these altitudes of development is evolutionarily potent, and as integralists we want to have receptors for the worldviews that all sides so passionately want us to see.
So here’s my take on the Zimmerman trial, and some ideas on how we integralists can bring wisdom, intelligence and vitality to the debate.
Listen to an excerpt below. The full audio is premium content on integrallife.com.
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