I found out about the not-guilty verdict in George Zimmerman’s trial for the death of Trayvon Martin at work. It was about 1:30 AM, and as soon as I read the news I felt physically ill. After that my eyes started to well up. A flurry of emotions and thoughts followed, one after the other, until I was feeling so much that I didn’t know what I was feeling. Trying to write a full fledged column would be a disservice to some of the outstanding pieces I’ve already read this morning, like this one and this one. For my own sanity, I will try to articulate a couple of those thoughts here, not all directly related to the Trayvon Martin incident:
- The above clip is essentially what George Zimmerman's defense was for shooting and killing Trayvon Martin. The episode containing the clip was aired in August of 1997. Sixteen years ago, a cartoon lampooned the ridiculousness of this justification for hunting animals. Yesterday, a jury found this to be a valid excuse to hunt and kill a 17-year old, unarmed, African-American teenager. Somehow, by going forward 16 years, America traveled back 50.
- Between Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Oakland PD's shameful homicide clearance rate, Chicago's constant bloodshed, and a million other examples, it has essentially been decreed that its open hunting season nationwide on African-American youths. Kid gets shot and killed in the ghetto? No big deal, they're dead in a zip code that doesn't matter. Shoot a 17-year old from a gated community? Don't worry, he didn't look like he was supposed to be there, so you'll be ok. America desperately needs to fix its inner-cities, pour money into education, give the people living there a better opportunity at a solid life. Fix the inner city, and then maybe people that "look like they're from there" won't automatically strike an unjust fear into some people. If anythings going to happen, people have to start to care. Trayvon's death was a tragedy, but so are the deaths of the 9 people killed on Chicago's south-side 4th of July weekend. Care about the bodies that ARE from the wrong side of the tracks, not just the ones that "look it".
- I'm not a supporter of vigilantism. However, if news broke that someone helped expedite George Zimmerman's departure from this mortal coil, I would not be mad. As a matter of fact I'd be damn near tempted to celebrate. After a little idle imagining, I've decided that the most poetically justified way for Zimmerman to go out would be to get shot while visiting Arizona, by someone who assumed because of Zimmerman's skin he was in illegal immigrant trying to cross the border, done in by a similar strain of prejudice and hatred to his own.
- And what would I do when I heard about this theoretical scenario? I'd go to my closet, grab my black hoodie, walk to the 7-11 four blocks from my house, and buy a bag of skittles and an Arizona iced tea. Because since I was born with a lack of pigmentation, the simple act that got Trayvon Martin killed would just get me a sugar rush. If it weren't for George Zimmerman, that's all that Trayvon would have gotten.
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