Darlene Johnson did what a lot of people do. She called me to vent. She wanted to talk about - who else? - Jennifer Porter.
Johnson is a former schoolteacher who lives in Carrollwood. She is also black and that gives her view of the case a particular shape and perspective.
From the moment it happened on March 31, Johnson has followed every detail of the saga involving Porter, the schoolteacher finally charged last week with leaving the scene of a fatal crash.
This is what Johnson saw: A white woman, with a big-name white lawyer. Two dead black children. Two more injured ones.
And once you clear away the details, a potential case of a white woman skating merely because she is white. That is what Darlene Johnson fears will happen.
"Look, nobody hates white people. Nobody wants this to be ugly," Johnson said. "But when she came forward, I saw ugly if it isn't handled well."
Why, Johnson wonders, didn't Porter come forward with, say, a minister by her side? If she was sincere in her remorse, why did she have to apologize in words that sounded handcrafted by her lawyer?
She noted that Porter was out of jail in just a few hours.
The standard $7,500 bail didn't seem high enough to Johnson.
She doesn't buy the theory (and neither do I) that Porter didn't stop because she feared the neighborhood, feared crime and danger. Porter worked at a school a third of a mile away. She probably drove that street day in and day out. She might even have taught some of the children in the neighborhood.
Johnson still struggles to make sense of why Porter wasn't charged with vehicular homicide. Prosecutors say the facts of the case don't rise to the standard required to prove that charge.
Like others, she isn't waiting for a conviction to decree how much jail time she'd give Porter. The sentence for leaving the scene could range from 22 months to 15 years. In Johnson's eyes, the offense is worth five to seven years. Anything less, she said, and "I will be crushed."
Anything less would send a loud message that black lives are not valued, she said. "Black children's lives matter," Johnson said. "She did not steal school supplies."
This is Darlene Johnson's crucial point, and she wants you to understand it, loud and clear. She believes in her heart that if the dead and injured children were white, not black, the driver would automatically get prison time.
For each of us, to some degree or other, race refracts our view of events. It's the O.J. syndrome. Whites and blacks look at the same set of facts and come up with opposite conclusions. While some blacks, like Johnson, question the legal process, some whites think blacks get endless breaks and that whites are the real victims.
You can be sure I've heard from many whites about this case. It stirs up powerful feelings in them, just as it does in Johnson. Some whites have their own twist on events and some of the people all but delight in their cruelty.
Not only have I heard the bad-neighborhood theory as justification for Porter's failure to stop. I've heard Lisa Wilkins, mother of the victims, described as a bad parent for leaving her children in the park adjacent to the street where they were hit. I've heard wild accusations that she's a drug-taking welfare mother - a records check shows no drug arrests - contrasted with the sweet-faced teacher who made just one mistake and deserves our sympathy.
I don't understand these people. Have they not stopped to contemplate what the noise of bodies striking a car must have sounded like?
I am getting tired of the poor, poor Jennifer routine. My empathy is not with her, but with people like Darlene Johnson. She, too, has a right to see that justice is served.
