Prejudice, poison and paradox in the USA

Call it the American paradox.

The country has a black President. Its army had a black chief of staff. Its foreign service was led by a black woman. Yet a seventeen-year-old black boy walking home in a gated community, carrying nothing more lethal than a bag of sweets and a mobile phone can be shot and killed by a non-black vigilante because "he looked suspicious".

Something is deeply wrong; at least that's what America's veteran civil rights leaders and the boy's parents told me.

I've met Jesse Jackson at many of these moments, when race rears its head and America braces itself for trouble. He told me his three sons have all looked down a police gun barrel "because of their race". There's been a backlash to the election of Barack Obama, he told me.

Violence towards blacks is intensifying; the death of Trayvon Martin exposes this further; "it's the perfect storm", he argues, "an unarmed kid is shot dead and the police do a drugs and alcohol test on the body, but not on the killer who walks free...we've seen this before - in the sixties. It's called racism."

Another Reverend, Al Sharpton is a veteran of these moments, never slow to stir the racial pot himself. He told me this killing is a threat to everyone in America and cannot be tolerated. They all want justice.They want George Zimmerman, the killer, to be arrested. But because he pleads self defence, Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law means he can't be arrested, or charged, or brought to trial. He used force when force was being used on him, so he was entitled to kill. That's his story anyway. And the law backs him up.

Trayvon's parents told me this is torture for them. His father Tracy finds it hard to keep from breaking down; he says he talks to his son every night and his son tells him to keep fighting. His mother is more composed but says with huge understatement "it's very hard to lose a child, but under these circumstances it's extremely hard." But they agree with the civil rights leaders that racism in America has never gone away. They believe the death of their son could have meaning only if it helps sweep away the poison of the past.

"Trayvon", says Jesse Jackson, "was the canary, exposing the poison in the mine."

There are rallies and marches, day and night. A group calling itself the New Black Panthers has put a bounty on the head of the killer. Church leaders deplore this, but want to see him arrested. The President has spoken and identified himself with the victim; "if I had a son", said Obama, "he'd look like Trayvon." Federal investigators are crawling all over this case.

The single pull of a trigger by a man, carrying as many assumptions as he had bullets, has re-opened the great fault line that runs through America; race. Black President or not, the prejudice and the poison hasn't gone away.