Trayvon Martin was a healthy looking 17 year old man. (And stop calling him a boy. It's very insulting.) George Zimmerman is a pudgy looking 29 year old man. Trayvon Martin could easily have sprinted the 70 yards or so to where he was staying and been contentedly munching on Skittles in front of the television before George Pudgymon Zimmerman had a chance to exit his vehicle. He could have called the police and reported being followed by a weird, pudgy looking pervert.
Trayvon Martin chose not to do that for reasons I consider obvious. In the environment Trayvon Martin grew up in, running away is considered to be pussy. A man...a real man doesn't run away. A real man doesn't attempt to deescalate conflict. A real man escalates conflict until someone is injured or killed.
Trayvon Martin wasn't raised to take the most prudent course of action. He was raised to be confrontational. In his environment, a man who isn't feared by others isn't a man. He's a pussy. Trayvon Martin did exactly what his real man role models taught him to do. He turned on a pursuer whom I could probably out run and escalated the conflict until someone was dead. He just didn't expect the life lost to be his own.
George Zimmerman has been widely accused of practicing what is generally referred to as "racial profiling" usually by individuals who are shamelessly displaying the same behavior. Here's how the racial profiling practiced by America's Zimmerman hating lynch mob works:
All young black men who are accused of a crime are innocent...period.
All members of the law enforcement community who arrest young black men are racists...period.
Anyone who openly admits that the demographic group known as "young black men" boasts a stratospheric rate of incarceration and a tendency to react to every conflict or disagreement with violence is a racist.
Trayvon Martin was a young black man and was therefore innocent, just another tragic victim of racism.
I'm not buying their story and contrary to what many would like to believe, I'm not a racist. I've spent my entire life, the better part of half a century in America and I cannot recall a single incident where a young black man made me feel unusually threatened. I spent my adolescence in the 1960's and 1970's in a community that was politically progressive, yet had only a handful of black families residing there. There was nothing particularly threatening about the few black kids I went to school with. They behaved and talked like everyone else...
Then came middle school and something called the "Metco Program."
In the sixth grade I suddenly came in contact with a dozen or so kids who grew up in an inner city environment. I wasn't abused or threatened by any of them, but they were clearly different and reminded me of characters I only saw on television. At the age of eleven, I learned an important lesson. Skin color did not determine your behavior. Your behavior is determined by your environment and especially by your role models.
I'd like to learn more about Trayvon Martin's environment and role models before the lynch mob hunts George Zimmerman down. What do you think?
Very thoughtful and well-written! It's no wonder I've followed you for years!
ReplyDeleteI'd be curious to know more about the inner-city blacks you went to school with years back...
What was it about them that made them so different.
There was an animated television show called "The Cosby Kids" that followed the misadventures of a handful of inner city black kids. My first impression of the METCO students was that they were beamed out of the show and into our school. They spoke to each other in a very loud, animated fashion and I barely understood the dialect. I know now that they tended to cluster in groups because they grew up in an environment where one needed to be seen as part of a group in order to be physically safe from other students. As time went on, I began to notice that they lost their fear of being seen alone in the hallways and didn't behave like characters from Hollywood Central Casting. I remember hearing a few stories about cars being stolen from the parking lot but I was never targeted by any of them nor did I witness any violent or antisocial behavior. I suspect they were hand picked for the program according to academic record and/or the lack of a criminal record but I have no access to the records that would allow me to prove it.
ReplyDeleteThey were different just as students from a foreign country would be different. I remember it as an important lesson about the nature/nurture debate. Behavior is mostly influenced by one's environment.
¡Guau, es es (Wow, that is) unbelievable!
ReplyDeleteVictim-blaming bullshit.
ReplyDeleteWhat was Trayvon Martin doing when he was shot?
DeleteNo reply Emma?
DeleteWhat was Trayvon Martin doing when he was shot? Just going about his life, minding his own business, as everybody is entitled to do unmolested.
ReplyDeleteTrayvon Martin did not run back to where he was staying and call the police on the weirdo who was following him, an action he was more than physically capable of doing. Instead, he chose to be confrontational, a choice of action that ultimately cost him his life.
DeleteHe was raised in a culture where the course of action least likely to result in injury or death is considered a sign of weakness. And in a human jungle, weakness invites further attacks from others.
Anyone interested in addressing America's violence problem will concentrate their attention on those who promote aggression instead of wasting time on more futile attempts at gun control.
@Fowl Ideas, my comment was in response to the original article, not your comment on it.
ReplyDeleteThe article I wrote?
Delete