Zimmerman never said what there was about Trayvon Martin that made him deem Trayvon to look suspicious. The operator told Zimmerman that there was no need for him to continue to follow Martin as law enforcement was being dispatched to check out the suspicious looking person.
We know that Trayvon was aware of Zimmerman following him because he told a female friend with whom e was chatting on the phone that there was a guy following him. At some point, Zimmerman and Martin interacted. Trayvon Martin, 6' 4" tall and 140 pounds, died from a gunshot wound inflicted by Zimmerman,who said that he killed Martin in self-defense. Zimmerman outweighed Trayvon by at least 80 pounds and Trayvon Martin was unarmed.
The investigating police officer said that Zimmerman had a bloody nose. Zimmerman was treated at the scene but said that he didn't need to go to a hospital. Zimmerman was allowed to go home. So far, there has been no arrest.
I don't know that Zimmerman is guilty of murder but neither do I know that he is not. Local law enforcement did not treat the site of Trayvon's death as a crime scene and didn't conduct the usual forensic tests that help determine if a crime has taken place. The Sanford police chief said that Zimmerman had the right to defend himself under Florida's Stand Your Ground law. The section upon which Zimmerman's claim of self-defense apparently relies is subsection (3):
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.As many Americans clamor for Zimmerman's arrest, an effort to paint Trayvon as a juvenile delinquent has arisen among Zimmerman's supporters. No matter what offenses are attributed to Trayvon Martin, none of them are relevant to the events that resulted in his death. This type of character assassination of the victim reminds me of the efforts often made to discredit rape victims by insisting that it was the victim's clothing or behavior that made her a target of the rapist. It doesn't matter what Trayvon wore or his school suspensions. It wouldn't matter if he was a gangsta selling pot. The issue is did Zimmerman have a reasonable fear for his life that justified his taking of Trayvon's life?
To answer that question, a jury needs to examine evidence of all of the events of that evening. Was Zimmerman justified in following Trayvon? Who initiated the confrontation? What about Trayvon's state of mind? He realized that he was being followed, he told his girlfriend that there was someone following him. Would it be reasonable for Trayvon to fear for his own safety? Did he not have a right to defend himself based on a reasonable fear that the stranger who approached him meant to do him bodily harm? Would there have been any type of altercation if Zimmerman had not continued to follow Trayvon after the 911 operator expressly advised him not to do so?
Are we to accept that Florida's Stand Your Ground law only applied to Zimmerman, that only he was allowed to act based on a reasonable fear of imminent death or bodily harm? Martin was approached by a stranger who was following him and that stranger had a gun. Isn't it reasonable that Martin would defend himself and try to take the gun? If this did indeed occur, then it was Martin who was threatened and who was fighting for his life. Martin didn't bring the gun to the fight. Seems plausible that Trayvon Martin was perfectly justified in attempting to disarm Zimmerman.
Zimmerman was not a law enforcement officer. Martin had no reason to follow any command that Zimmerman gave him. According to Zimmerman's own account, he must have drawn his gun at some point, otherwise how did Martin know that he had a gun and attempt to take it? It is a valid argument that Martin was the one with a reasonable fear that his life was in danger and any damage that he did to Zimmerman was in self-defense.
I cannot declare Zimmerman guilty or not guilty, that is a task for a jury. However, I do know that it is unacceptable that black men are viewed as suspicious and a threat simply for walking through a neighborhood wearing a hoodie. Black parents should not have to warn their children not to wear certain clothing and to be careful when walking on a public street not to frighten white people with their very presence. When I was a child, my mother taught us rules. We knew not to try and sit down at the lunch counter at Woolworths or Roses. We knew better than to look a white person directly in the eye and to always step aside if a white person wanted to use the sidewalk even if it meant stepping into the rain filled gutter next to the curb. Any black person over the age of 50 who grew up in the south is likely to have had similar experiences.
President Obama said that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon. Newt Gingrich, raised in the south, went stupid and declared that the President's observation was racist. Gingrich is a fool who intentionally pretends to have forgotten the past. If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. What frightens and angers me is that to people like George Zimmerman, my son would also look suspicious and deserving of killing. I have no doubt that was the point of the president's observation.
Zimmerman was not a law enforcement officer. Martin had no reason to follow any command that Zimmerman gave him. According to Zimmerman's own account, he must have drawn his gun at some point, otherwise how did Martin know that he had a gun and attempt to take it? It is a valid argument that Martin was the one with a reasonable fear that his life was in danger and any damage that he did to Zimmerman was in self-defense.
I cannot declare Zimmerman guilty or not guilty, that is a task for a jury. However, I do know that it is unacceptable that black men are viewed as suspicious and a threat simply for walking through a neighborhood wearing a hoodie. Black parents should not have to warn their children not to wear certain clothing and to be careful when walking on a public street not to frighten white people with their very presence. When I was a child, my mother taught us rules. We knew not to try and sit down at the lunch counter at Woolworths or Roses. We knew better than to look a white person directly in the eye and to always step aside if a white person wanted to use the sidewalk even if it meant stepping into the rain filled gutter next to the curb. Any black person over the age of 50 who grew up in the south is likely to have had similar experiences.
President Obama said that if he had a son he would look like Trayvon. Newt Gingrich, raised in the south, went stupid and declared that the President's observation was racist. Gingrich is a fool who intentionally pretends to have forgotten the past. If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon. What frightens and angers me is that to people like George Zimmerman, my son would also look suspicious and deserving of killing. I have no doubt that was the point of the president's observation.
WONDERFUL Post.thanks for share..
ReplyDeleteBravo! Well said.
ReplyDeleteAll this Post Hoc digging up of crimes or faked Facebook photos does not justify Zimmerman's use of Deadly Force. All that matters are what Zimmerman knew and what he saw at the time of the incident. And what we know is Martin had committed no crime, and was under no obligation to answer or defer to Zimmerman and that Zimmerman chased down Martin got involved in an altercation and then shot and killed Trayvon.
ReplyDeleteIt was not with justification. It was Murder.
But, trying to explain this right-wingers gets you told "they don't think they'd have to waste a bullet on me".
It's shocking and it's sick and it's the Modern conservative.
Gene,
ReplyDeleteI think the law agrees with you. Pulling a gun on an unarmed person not visibly in possession of one -- and even mentioning that you have a gun to gain leverage in an argument carries a three year minimum sentence
Zimmerman is as guilty as hell.
I believe that young Martin's only threat was to a white man's dignity and the "natural order" that allows him to chase a black person off a street he had the right to be on. Kinda the same reason these people hate Obama.
Sheria - A thoughtful and informational post as always, thank you for sharing. I think you have articulated the crux of racism still prevalent in this country - that black citizens, despite all the laws and social gains still must fight to be treated equally.
ReplyDeleteI have always held the belief that RACE is a four letter word and should be treated like a swear word. It divides us, like we come from different planets. We are all members of just one race, the human race. We come in different colors, sizes, traditions due to our ethnic backgrounds. As a nation, if we are to survive and thrive, we MUST move past absurd and ignorant misconceptions and face the future as one people - Americans.
rockync: "We are all members of just one race, the human race."
ReplyDeleteThis is a fact. Unfortunately, we are forced to declare what "race" we are on all sorts of forms, and that gives people the wrong notion that different "races" exist.
"The word 'race' has no coherent biological meaning."
"There is nothing wrong with using geographic labels to designate people. Major continental terms are just fine, and sub-regional refinements such as Western European, Eastern African, Southeast Asian, and so forth carry no unintentional baggage. In contrast, terms such as "Negroid," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloid" create more problems than they solve. Those very terms reflect a mix of narrow regional, specific ethnic, and descriptive physical components with an assumption that such separate dimensions have some kind of common tie. Biologically, such terms are worse than useless. Their continued use, then, is in social situations where people think they have some meaning.
The role played by America is particularly important in generating and perpetuating the concept of "race." The human inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere largely derive from three very separate regions of the world—Northeast Asia, Northwest Europe, and Western Africa—and none of them has been in the New World long enough to have been shaped by their experiences in the manner of those long-term residents in the various separate regions of the Old World.
It was the American experience of those three separate population components facing one another on a daily basis under conditions of manifest and enforced inequality that created the concept in the first place and endowed it with the assumption that those perceived "races" had very different sets of capabilities. Those thoughts are very influential and have become enshrined in laws and regulations. This is why I can conclude that, while the word "race" has no coherent biological meaning, its continued grip on the public mind is in fact a manifestation of the power of the historical continuity of the American social structure, which is assumed by all to be essentially "correct."
Finally, because of America's enormous influence on the international scene, ideas generated by the idiosyncrasies of American history have gained currency in ways that transcend American intent or control. One of those ideas is the concept of "race," which we have exported to the rest of the world without any realization that this is what we were doing. The adoption of the biologically indefensible American concept of "race" by an admiring world has to be the ultimate manifestation of political correctness."--C. Loring Brace
Shaw, I have been threatened by census takers with jail time for refusing to name my "race". I always fill it in as human and I tell them I am a human being and just want to be counted with all my fellow human beings.
ReplyDeleteI think having ethnic traditions and language handed down through generations is a wonderful thing and we should all enjoy celebrating our origins but that should not be used solely to define us.
I can remember my father one day when we were young declaring in his heavily accented, broken English, "OK, we live in America so we speak English - no more Czech, we are Americans now!" America - the Great Melting Pot - this should be the place where we throw the old baggage out the window and just be a nation of diverse human beings with this unique commonality but there are many who cling desparately to that racial divide and refuse to see the damage it causes.
I am NOT color blind or gender blind or... I recognize that there are differences amongst us. I see the differences but choose to embrace what we have in common; our human-ness.