
They should get the arrest and more. The police who cooperated with trying to cover this up should be fired or jailed, as far as I’m concerned. I should also say- and the last caller was profoundly correct, in terms of his summation of what it is to be a black man walking around- black teenagers, any white teenagers, don’t know how to function, don’t know how to process a lot of this stuff. It’s important that we can’t lay all the blame for this on the police. The blame that’s involved should be scented right on each and every one of us. We have to re-examine our sense of values and priorities and our sense of self in terms of who we think we are as a nation. That’s really where the core of this is. Functionally, sure- all of this is coming too much after the fact. We have to do what that last listener did. We have to re-examine how we see each other and what we want this society to be and that means examining who the cops are, who is the chief of police, who are you voting for, what do you do in your own community to push the good forward? To inch it forward, just a little bit. That’s really crucial. -James McBride

Hey Tom, hey listen- I really enjoyed the show, and the gentleman Mychal- I found a great deal of honesty in what he was saying. It may be something the rest of us need to look at maybe. I think we’re all guilty of racism and bias. I think we’ve all got a certain degree of bias, that we have. When we come to the play and we want to discuss these things with each other I think we all need to admit that we have a sense of commission and omission and that- hey, we’ve all said the N word. At some time or other, other people have done that too. I would just like to see folks deal with their own bias and racism and political problems, and step up and discuss this thing, after we look at ourselves. -Gene in Greenbrier, Tennesee

I appreciate the last caller because it’s very easy to go about your life and say you’re not a racist. But to live in America is to be effected and to internalize racism. So we all have to come to the table and say- Not that I’m not a racist, but in fact, I am a racist. Being a racist is not the worst thing that you can be. The worst thing that can happen because of your racism is that a boy like Trayvon can die. So you have to address your own biases and racism that we’ve all internalized. I hear those screams from the 911 call and I know that it haunts me. But there’s a 13 year old witness who says he hears those screams and he knows he fits the stereotype of the type of people that get killed. So what type of effect does that have on him? We are all internalizing this every single day. And we all have to work on that. –Mychal Denzel Smith
-On Point with Tom Ashbrook, March 20, The Killing of Trayvon Martin