How
Skittles, a can of iced tea and $22 make someone threatening is a question a
jury should decide. Whether George Zimmerman’s peers will have the opportunity
to make that decision is still being investigated.
Zimmerman
was the head of a Neighborhood Watch organization in Sanford, Fla. on Feb. 26. Trayvon
Martin was a 17-year old fulfilling his younger brother’s request to grab some
candy that Sunday evening.
This
incident took place in a gated community of an Orlando suburb. Someway, somehow
Martin’s presence in this neighborhood was enough to alarm Zimmerman to call
police on a non-emergency telephone number.
Per various
media reports, by the time police arrived, Martin was shot once and Zimmerman
had blood coming from his nose and head.
It’s
interesting that Martin was thinking about someone in the moments before he
died. Maybe that was why his actions were suspicious. Who thinks about others
these days, when it’s more convenient to think about ourselves?
Maybe
Zimmerman’s defense of his actions will combine Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law
with a quote from Malcom X. “Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect
everyone, but if someone puts his hands on you, send him to the cemetery.”
The
investigation is ongoing and should be complete in the next week. However, that
did not stop the Martin family from hiring a pair of attorney’s and taking
their case to the media. Ben Crump, one of two attorneys the Martin family
hired, said race is the 600 pound elephant in the room because Zimmerman is
white and Martin was black
I beg to
differ: the “elephant in the room” is what makes someone look suspicious or
threatening? Honestly, ask yourself that question.
Have we
become so cloistered that something that if anything is amiss it’s
automatically cause to feel threatened?
Could it be
someone’s complexion? Maybe, their religion? How about their socio-economic
status? Then again, their syntax could be off. And don’t forget people who
appearance doesn’t fit our haughty standers of the norm.
Yes, all of those imperfections, and
others, must be so threatening that rather than attempt to understand those
differences we shutter in fear!
German
philosopher Hermann Hesse said it better “if you hate a person you hate
something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves
doesn’t disturb us.”
One could
speculate and say Martin probably didn’t fit the mold of non-threatening Negro,
which is why Zimmerman shot him. But that wouldn’t make me any better than the
people who are hoping the law can be contorted to convict the 28-year-old
Zimmerman before his day in court.
Admittedly,
the timing of the incident was not lost on me. That same night a heavily
tattooed, uneducated black man was running riot in downtown Orlando. But, no
one found LeBron James’ presence at the NBA All-Star game all that suspicious.
Maybe that
isn’t a good analogy because, if nothing else, the Zimmerman incident
illustrates the consequences of inadvertent stereotyping.
Laughs and
liveliness,
-Wb
