I’m not Trayvon Martin. I was way worse.
There’s a meme going around the internet and in street protests this week that has people proclaiming, “I am Trayvon Martin.”
But thinking about that seventeen-year-old boy’s death and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot him, I keep thinking, “Uh, no. I was a lot worse than Trayvon Martin.”
Let’s rehearse what we know about the kid who was gunned down last year.
We know he did drugs, smoking at least enough marijuana to get caught and suspended from school.
I went to a rural high school where drinking and smoking marijuana were as commonplace as doing homework.
I never got suspended for it, only because it was the culture of that time and place to look the other way. I remember kids making bongs in art and shop class.
There is also some evidence that Martin stole things. He was found at one point with what may have been a “burglary tool.”
When I was a kid, I was a certifiable klepto. I’m ashamed to admit it now, but my decidedly casual moral and ethical boundaries ranged from theft to harassment to vandalism.
I’m sure some of my high school friends will correct me if I’m misremembering this, but I seem to recall one lazy, bored small-town summer when we actually made a game of pestering police officers — a kind of high-stakes hide and seek.
Except, really, the stakes weren’t so very high.
In my rural, white world, it was understood that kids would get up to hijinks. I’m not excusing my behavior — it was appalling, shameful, idiotic.
I’m merely pointing out that where I come from, a kid was expected to do far, far worse than anything Trayvon Martin did as a sort of rite of passage, as a way of sowing wild oats.
Some kid acting like a screw-up didn’t prompt anyone to reach for their pistol.
On the contrary. There’s actually a whole genre of American movies — “American Graffiti,” “Animal House,” “American Pie,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” — romanticizing teen rebellion.
Or maybe I should say white teen rebellion. Try to imagine it being a funny sight gag in an American movie if a bunch of black kids sabotaged a cop car? Or sped away from a traffic accident?
Text messages also suggest that Martin had a fascination with guns and gangsta culture. Friends, we owned guns, big guns, and we did things with those guns that make my blood run cold now.
Finally, there is this idea that maybe Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman in the street the night the boy was killed. Maybe Zimmerman pulled the trigger in self-defense.
I can tell you that in the rural white culture where I grew up, if some strange guy is stalking you as you walk home from the corner store, refusing to mind his own business, there’s a level chance he’ll get a poke in the eye.
Now let me say this. In hindsight, some grown-up should definitely have twisted my ear a lot sooner. And there are still some old neighbors back in my home town who are owed a sincere apology.
I’m guessing there are some people that Trayvon Martin would have apologized to someday as well, if he had lived. He would one day have been sheepish about and embarrassed by the stupid nonsense he got up to as a kid.
What I didn’t need, though, was a guy with a pistol following me through dark streets. And I can tell you straight up that Trayvon Martin didn’t need that either.
Finally, I’ll say what I think is obvious but has maybe gotten lost in the culture war back-and-forth of this tragedy.
If a guy had shot me down in my home town in exactly the same way that Trayvon Martin was shot down, he would be in prison right now.
Particularly if you flip the racial dynamic and make it a black man shooting a white seventeen-year-old kid, it would be a no-brainer.
You could have told the jury about every one of my youthful indiscretions. You could have pointed out that the man who gunned me down had some injuries on his face. The guilty verdict would still have come back in about four minutes.
In a lot of ways my experience and Trayvon’s mark the current racial demarcation in America.
Yes, Jim Crow is gone. The modern era of lynchings and officially sanctioned violence against blacks is over.
But behavior that is met with flexibility, patience and a certain amount of weary, parental fortitude in white society — casual drug use, petty crime, youthful nonsense — will still get you killed or sent to prison if your skin happens to be black.
George Zimmerman walked away from this one. The rest of us? Not so much.
KHL,
I am not passing it over. I am simply rejecting that it is the critical point of the incident.
Here, out of the following, which would you consider illegal…
1. Getting out of a truck
2. Following someone
3. Confronting someone
4. Beating someone up
You read that and point to #1 as the problem. That strikes me as absurd. The only illegal act in that list is #4…. and no, I don’t think 1 through 3 justify 4. Not even close.
I do agree with you that Martin was young and likely not making well thought out adult decisions. Physically attacking someone like he did was a really, really bad move… no matter how creepy-ass he thought the guy was. But while being young and scared might explain WHY he did it, it doesn’t change the fact that he did do it. Would you suggest that because the person beating you up is young and stupid that you should forfeit your right to defend yourself?
“Bad decisions are why people go to jail. Sometimes it is because they decided to lie on paperwork to get Medicaid benefits. George Zimmerman made a bad decision”
People do NOT go to jail for making bad decisions. They go to jail for violating the law. In your example, lying on Medicaid paper work is illegal. That is why they go to jail. The fact that they made a bad decision is neither here nor there. They probably also spend their paychecks on booze and cigarettes, that is also a bad decision… but not illegal. Ya see?
Zimmerman mad a bad decision, by getting out of his truck and confronting Martin. But he didn’t break the law. Martin also made a bad decision, by physically attacking Zimmerman.
If you’re so sure of how right you are, you start following strangers down the street at night for no reason, refuse to identify yourself and reach into your pocket. When you’re at the hospital, tell the police how much of a victim you are, because, after all you did nothing illegal. See how much sympathy you get. If George Zimmerman had did the same thing to a police officer and not Trayvon Martin, it would’ve been George Zimmerman who caught a bullet. Remember Amadou Diallo? He was reaching for his wallet, I think. And it would’ve been ruled justified, as it probably should be. If you’re under threat, you’d be stupid to wait for someone to physically attack you before reacting.
Trayvon Martin was the person who was minding his own business here. He was walking home from the store, and someone decides to follow him, under what turned out to be the wrong belief that he might be up to no good. He had every reason to believe George Zimmerman was a threat to his safety, and rather than say something when Martin asked why he was following him, he acts in a way to make him feel even more threatened.
What if it was your daughter walking home at night and some strange man was following her for no reason? Should she wait until he has his hands around her throat before reaching for the pepper spray?
Dave,
You continue to state something known — that Zimmerman got out of his car and followed Martin — along with something unknown — that Martin started the physical fight, swung first, attacked Zimmerman before Z. attacked him. You don’t know that, you are assuming it for the purposes of your argument. By killing Martin, Z. ensured that only his side of the story would be told. If M. had killed Z., he could have told the story his way and the argument could be quite different.
Will is exactly right. Nobody knows exactly what happened between the point where Z got out of his car and the police arrived to find TM dead.
Dave,
I didn’t follow every jot and tittle of the trial, but is it irrefutably true that in “the confrontation” between Martin and Zimmerman that Martin swung first? Or did Zimmerman swing first?
Was there any eyewitness testimony (other than Zimmerman’s) showing Zimmerman definitely did not put his hands on Martin first?
Because you seem to be quite sure that was the case in saying Marin attacked Zimmerman. Could it be that Martin was just a better counterpuncher and better able to defend himself than girly-screaming, “unathletic, soft,” (as Z’s gym trainer described him) potty-mouthed tough-talking but actually not very tough George?
This is a serious question.
Oh, and bad decisions are exactly why people go to jail. Laws are a collected set of what society considers bad decisions. Drinking a beer isn’t necessarily a bad decision but drinking 6 beers in a short period of time is probably a bad decision. Drinking 6 beers and getting in your car and driving is a really bad decision which is also likely to be illegal depending on your body’s ability to process alcohol. Shooting someone, outside of a war or police situation (and sometimes then), is nearly always a bad decision but the Stand Your Ground laws have made it a bad decision that will at times have no legal consequences.
For those of you who insist on your gun rights let me stipulate that sometimes using a gun to defend yourself may be a bad decision but in a situation it may be the best available option. Essentially that is Zimmerman’s defense – that all the bad decisions he made leading to a confrontation don’t rise to the level of illegal bad decision-making.
It goes back to what is self defense? To me it should be a very narrow definition yet adequate to really be self defense. It is not about how we feel or about retribution or about the ability to put someone down who is threatening you, it is the minimum amount of force or non-force if you can run, to get out of the situation.
In this case with this law we don’t know if it was self defense or not, thus we don’t have enough to convict someone of a crime.
I think it goes to something deeper in our society; we accept and enjoy violence as a means of getting our way or expressing our anger and retribution. Do we encourage people to run from a fight or to stay and kick their ass? We should be encouraging people to avoid violence in almost all cases, yet culturally we see this as weak and non-manly thus to say well Zimmerman or Martin should have just run, why did they square off? No one asks that question because running is considered worse than staying and in the end killing someone.
And then there is Marissa Alexander in a Florida town not too far away Sanford. She is a young mother who fired a warning shot (from her licensed/register handgun) to stop her estranged abusive husband from attacking her. It stopped the attack and no one was injured, let alone killed. The husband reported the incident and Marissa was arrested. Although it seems the perfect situation for a “stand your ground defense,” the judge ruled she could not use it and she is now in prison for 20 years. Oh and one other thing, Marissa is Black.
We can pretend that racism was not part of these cases, but the fact is we still have a justice system where skin color is a significant determinate of the outcome.
Look for the photo’s of George Zimmerman’s hands taken by the police, no marks or scrapes. Google Trayvon’s autopsy report and it shows wounds on Trayvon’s knuckles. George had a busted nose and wounds on the back of his head. No, we don’t know “exactly” what happened that night, but if it walks like a duck…
and here’s your “flipped racial dynamic” case…
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2013/07/tim-mcnabb/black-man-shoots-white-teen-jury-says-self-defense-and-nobody-cares/
The Scott trial didn’t make the “show circuit” court… barely a blip on the radar even though he had just as much chance of going to prison as Zimmerman… I wonder if Mr. Scott is going to be investigated for civil rights violations?? Why should either of them be? Neither Mr. Scott, nor Mr. Zimmerman are criminals in the eyes of the law (or in my eyes for what little that is worth).
Give George and Roderick back their pistols and let them get on with their lives.
… and if you want a real laugh, type “Zimmerman media bias” into Google Images search…