Ahmaud Arbery, a Young Black Man in America Just Going Out on a Jog

I like to jog, something that you already know if you've read this blog...or just skimmed over the article titles.  When I run, I use as my primary routes my own subdivision, along with the neighboring one, running past scores of houses...although when on extraordinarily long runs I've been known to extend them further out into other neighborhoods.  I prefer the residential streets because the traffic is much lighter than along a main thoroughfare...and quite frankly I'm not a big fan of running on sidewalks.  But while I am very familiar with my own neighborhood, I am still wary of ever going on nighttime runs, and for one reason alone: I'm not one hundred percent sure that there isn't among the residents one or more gun-owning crazy, paranoid persons who might be liable to shoot me, seeing me as a running person in the darkness fleeing a crime.  Maybe that sounds paranoid coming from an aging, frumpy-looking white dude as myself, but if you're a black man in this country...especially the South, that's a principal of personal survival.  But apparently now, it doesn't have to be in the night...in February Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year old black man, was simply jogging down a road in plain daylight in a suburb of Brunswick, Georgia, when he was pursued, stopped, struggled with...and then repeatedly shot to death by a white father and son, Gregory and Travis McMichael, who had noticed him while driving their pickup truck around.  The father was a retired county police officer, and this fact seemed to affect the case as the prosecutor felt the need to recuse herself...ultimately no charges were filed and the McMichaels' version, that they were looking into a number of burglaries in the area (apparently untrue), became essentially the police report.  But a few days ago a lawyer who knew the McMichaels released a video made of the incident...and the case exploded onto the national stage. Now the McMichaels are being charged with murder...a case that has "Trayvon Martin" and race-tinged vigilante violence stamped all over it. I'm sure as this case develops we'll learn more from it, but it grieves me to no end about the fact that in my country someone can't freely engage themselves in a public setting without being profiled, harassed, and becoming subjected to the violent whims of others, while the justice system seems to work against them at every turn.  And it's not just blacks suffering this treatment: look just recently at the public harassment of people from eastern Asian backgrounds as they become scapegoated for the coronavirus pandemic by ignorant, bigoted jerks...