Trayvon Martin's death — society's reflex problem
NBC Latino - A black boy is dead. Likely murdered. Maybe executed. Trayvon Martin walked not with a fistful of steel, but of Skittles...
NBC Latino: A black boy is dead. Likely murdered. Maybe executed. Trayvon Martin walked not with a fistful of steel, but of Skittles. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watchman who had called 911 forty-six times over the last fifty-seven days and outweighed Trayvon by more than a hundred pounds, saw Trayvon as a threat. A guy who “looks like he’s up to no good”, he said, even though he offered the police dispatcher no observation to justify his suspicion other than the boy was black and had his hands in his waistband on a rainy day.
What lessons we draw from this sad, but familiar, episode are still unfolding. And as the federal government opens an investigation into the matter, hopefully we can get some clarity on why Zimmerman was set free by Sanford Police after killing someone with no apparent justification, why he was not tested for drugs or alcohol against what appears to be normal protocol, or why it took so long to release the distressing 911 tapes.
But while Trayvon’s family is left to pick up the pieces, we are left with broader social issues of race and ethnicity in America to address. So far what has been written is what we already know about race relations in this long-dead post-racial era; we are still captured by a collective fear of a black planet in a country whose gears are oiled by white privilege.
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