In the aftermath of
the Trayvon Martin verdict many black pundits, politicians and bureaucrats at
all levels of government shared how they have had to have discussions with
their sons about how to act after they walk out of their front doors. How to not attract attention, how to interact
with police officers, etc. My husband
and I found the need for these discussions to be very sad.
Listening to these
stories, I had a flashback to my own young days in the 1940’s when I was a
teenager. My mother emphasized to me
how, after I left our house, I should not attract attention, how I should walk,
how I should dress, how I should never be alone after dark because any girl who
didn’t follow these rules was asking to be sexually assaulted. My
step-grandmother, whom I adored, had the advice, “You should never be seen in
your clothes, dear. It will give the
boys the wrong idea”. (I still like
sloppy clothes, however.) There was no comprehension that I would not be the
one who was at fault. I must have broken
the rules. My own daughters are long
past the age where I would need to advise them, and I have no idea what young
girls are taught now, but I have a glimmer of feeling for what black men must
feel as they advise their own sons, and how the sons must feel.
Just as there has
been, and still is, pushback on the fact that when a young women is sexually
assaulted, it is not her fault, regardless of how stupid she may have been
dressed or acting. That a sexual assault
is wrong, wrong, wrong under all circumstances.
We need now to have that same level of pushback against the idiot belief
that if you are a young black male, you are a criminal. Gender and skin have the same quality. There is not one iota of anything one can do
about it!!
I
need to interject here that I am not equating sexual assault with murder. With good physical and psychological care,
one can overcome sexual assault. One
cannot be brought back to life.
When I listened and
watched the trial of George Zimmerman I was totally frustrated that with all of
the discussion of whether it was proper for George Zimmerman to rely on the
Stand Your Ground law, pull his gun and shoot a boy, there was no in-depth
discussion of the fact that in this instance George Zimmerman was the aggressor
and Trayvon Martin was using the only weapons he had – his fists – to Stand His
Ground against a fully grown and muscled adult male who was following him for
no reason, and could easily pose a dangerous threat to him. We have no idea if Zimmerman taunted Martin,
or what was said or done. But we do know that Martin was afraid of Zimmerman,
telling his friend, Rachelle Jeantel on his cell phone that he was being
followed by a “creepy-ass cracker”.
I
waited for even the liberal talk show people like Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow
to bring up this point that Martin had the right to the Stand Your Ground law
and expound on it at length, but not one did.
It was all whether Zimmerman had the right to shoot Martin. Of course someone may have brought up this
point that I didn’t watch, but they all should have been discussing it, at
length and in depth. There was
discussion that all Martin was doing was walking home, but there was no
discussion that he, too, had an absolutely legal right to use the Stand Your
Ground law against Zimmerman. Again in
this instance as in mine when a teen-ager, there was and is the assumption that
white males have the absolute right to dictate to a whole group of people how
they should act, talk, dress and think. To some, men have this right in general
regarding women, and white men in regard to both women and black people, men
and women. Fortunately, not all men
believe this, but too many do.
The result is, that
as all know in their hearts, underneath it all, that in Florida and elsewhere,
a black boy or man does not have the right to Stand His/Her Ground. After all, Martin was alone after dark,
wearing suspicious clothing, and being where this white male decided he
shouldn’t be. Martin was ‘just asking
for it’.
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