 |
| Trayvon Martin |
Martin was a 17 year-old black teen that was fatally shot by a 28 year-old neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, in the city of Sanford, Florida a month ago. Martin was unarmed. Zimmerman admitted to shooting him but has claimed self-defense and has not been charged.
The story which has been reported by almost every major news corporation in the United States has brought up the topic of injustice, and whether race played a part in the crime and investigation. An online petition on change.org calling for Zimmerman's arrest has over two-million signatures, rallies and protests have already taken place in major cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Sanford, Miami and even in the nations capitol.
Trayvon's Martins case has sparked lots of national outrage. We are seeing a rise of revenge vigilantism as Black nationalist group, New Black Panther Party issued a $10,000 bounty for anyone who can find Zimmerman. Director Spike Lee evidently tweeted an address said to be of Zimmerman's home, which actually turned out to be the home of an older couple that lives four miles from where Zimmerman actually lives. Black parents who already feared for the lives of their children, especially their boys, have now reinforced their fear in the possibility that their sons may be the target of racial profiling.
The gleaming uncomfortable pink elephant in the room right now is: race. Martin's parents and the Martin family lawyer, believe that if the crime was reversed and Martin was the shooter, he would've been arrested and tried for the crime.
Racial profiling has a long history in America and it usually affects minority males, specifically Black. Young Black men are constantly suspected of wrong-doings. This causes plenty of innocent men and their families to be in constant fear and wary of their surroundings. The lives of these young men are in danger because they're already branded as troublemakers, historically no fault of theirs.
New York City's controversial stop and frisk initiative gives police officers the legal right to stop and search anyone they deem suspicious. Many who oppose the law have accused it of being an excuse to racially profile. In actuality, majority of the men stopped and frisked by NYPD since it went into effect, have overwhelmingly been Black or Hispanic.
Personally, I don't feel comfortable having to constantly worry if the men in my family will ever become victims of someones preconceived notions of them. They say, if you live like a thug, you die like a thug.
Well I can proudly state that none of the men in my family are thugs and they are all hard-working, law abiding citizens. That didn't stop my father from being verbally abused by undercover cops several years ago for switching to a lane the cops supposedly wanted for themselves. Even my mother is paranoid, especially after she felt she was harassed twice by bored cops. If I'm ever driving in the car with my mother and a police car is behind or her in front of her vehicle, she will choose another route. It is what it is.
No one in my family works in law enforcement, so I can only sympathize with the families of the men and women who put their lives on the line as officers, because it is a brave job. But as an aware young human being, my trust isn't just given, I am not naive and I have my doubts. Cops are like everyone else, they are not perfect superheroes.
Just two months after I turned sixteen, I experienced one of the most negative life changing events that has ever happened to me. The main subject of this experience wasn't just a cop, but a sergeant. To protect my privacy, I won't detail what happened, but I quickly learned how easy it is to become a victim of racial profiling, accidental death and injustice.
In a nutshell, most people could only wish that they would be judged by their characters, and not the color of their skin. But the amount of emotion this case has brought out shows that there is a disconnect between the races and the judicial system.
Whether one wants to admit it or not, everyone has and/or will be stereotyped at least more than once in their lifetime. If people are afraid to evaluate their own misconceptions and prejudice, we will never move forward.
I've heard some solutions that state, "well if he wasn't dressed like a____, then he wouldn't have been killed." It is no wonder that hoodies have now become a symbol of the Trayvon Martin case. Being dressed in a hoodie does not determine what criminal activities an individual is capable of; if any.
Statements like the above only expose the troubling nature stereotypes have on how various people view each other. There's also a common meme of using racial crime statistics as a determining factor on what racial group should be feared and watched? Unfortunately, it came as no surprise to me which group seems to tense certain people up the most.
