Why Trayvon Martin is about race, not self-defense laws.

There have been many distractions from the actual cause of the cause of Trayvon Martin’s death and the lack of prosecution of the murderer George Zimmerman.  The worst of which are attacks on the victim ranging from the neighbor of George Zimmerman stating this whole incident would have been avoided if Trayvon responded appropriately when confronted by Zimmerman.  How bout if George responded appropriately to Trayvon’s question of why are you following me?  Then there’s Fox New’s low blow of Black and Latino men shouldn’t wear hoodies in the rain because they look like criminals. 

Then there’s the Florida self defense law, which the Sanford police state did not allow them to arrest or detain Zimmerman.  This law does not protect Zimmerman for several reasons.  The first the law specifically states that you are exempt from protection from this law if you initiate the conflict.  The police had the 911 tape of Zimmerman stating that Trayvon was running away from him and that Zimmerman was following him.  Actively pursuing someone is not standing your ground. Also as Zimmerman was following and harassing Trayvon because of his race, he was committing a hate crime. The law exempts people committing crimes from protection. The law also does not allow you to use self-defense against someone who has a legal right to be minding their own business as Trayvon was doing. You can read it here and interpret it for yourself.  http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/0776.html

The problem is racism.  Zimmerman thought Trayvon was suspicious because of his race, and executed him for it.  The police did not perform an adequate investigation before allowing Zimmerman to leave the scene, as they did not attempt to identify the victim.  They did not evaluate the 911-call where Zimmerman admitted to following Trayvon.  There is also the 911-call from a neighbor, which numerous screams of help from a teenager are clearly heard.  The voice of Zimmerman from his 911-call and the voice yelling for help are clearly different.  There is a preponderance of evidence that Zimmerman is not protected by the Florida self-defense statute.  In addition, all police need to perform an arrest is probable cause, not certainty of guilt.  The gun was not even collected as evidence for ballistics testing, etc.. or to prevent Zimmerman from killing again. Trayvon died because of his race. Zimmerman was allowed to walk away without being charged because of his race and the racist society we live in.

Why Trayvon Martin’s death is so disturbing to me.

Unfortunately Trayvon Martin’s murder is just one of many acts of violence against black men that goes unprosecuted due to racism.   With Oscar Grant, Rodney King and others, it was easy to blame the victim.  Grant might have been involved in fight that night, he might have said some offensive things to the police officer.  Rodney King was an alcoholic who was driving drunk.  As horrible as it sounds, the reality is it was easy to blame the victim in these cases and subtle messages from the media were effective in this.  With Trayvon Martin, there was nothing.  He was an excellent student. Participated in school sports, and was merely walking to 7-11 to buy a bag of candy.  However, Geraldo Rivera and FoxNews are now trying to blame Trayvon for wearing a hoodie?  Seriously?  It was raining.  Hoodies are a great rainwear option.  That’s all you can drum up Geraldo? Black and Latino men should be banned from wearing hoodies or face the wrath of racist vigilantes?

What also cuts to the core is the seeing myself in Trayvon’s situation.  The many times that police detained me because I seemed “suspicious.”  Like the time I stopped at a gas station to eat a box of donuts.  The time I was almost killed by police when I stopped to use the payphone next to a Taqueria. Turns out that they were looking for a Mexican-American who ran down the street in the opposite direction.  His description was a Mexican-American male wearing a red T-shirt and a baseball hat.  I had a huge afro and a collared brown and black shirt.  This night followed receiving my acceptance letter the same day. It was a shocking reminder that no matter who I am or aspire to be, I will always be a second-class citizen.

I think what really gets me is the feeling of helplessness.  I wish I could protect Trayvon and the future young men from such acts of racial violence.  Telling them that wearing a hoodie is dangerous is not the solution.  It’s a harsh reality we must tell young people of color that people view them negatively, but we should work on changing that horrid view of our people.  The, we have a Black president so our society is evolved is obviously equal to the “I have a black friend, so I can’t be racist” excuse.  Acting like race doesn’t kill our young Black males is not going to solve the problem we have.