I have been hesitant to comment on the Travyon Martin case, but I have mustered up the courage to add my voice to this very sad and agonizing situation. Every time I started to write about it before, I feared that my views may be just too biased. You see, I have a son too and I have not been able to separate my feelings as a mother with my understanding of the law.
While I do not like Florida’s “Stand your Ground Law”, it is the law and I have been pretty fixated on the trial, trying my best to understand the defense’s point of view. So I think I get the law now but what I don’t get is how all of the events that led up to George Zimmerman even needing to “stand his ground” have been ignored.
Travyon Martin was “walking while Black”. In the African American Community we all understand the “driving while Black” phenomena which is the higher likelihood that an African American man will be pulled over by the police, “just because.”
I don’t think that anybody has disputed that Trayvon was minding his own business, alone with his iced tea and Skittles, talking with a friend on his cell phone. Normal teen aged behavior. Trayvon was not being loud, he was not in any way suspicious except that he was Black and that ignited Zimmerman’s sensibilities about young black men…“These (explicative deleted) always get away with it.” These who and get away with what?
When my son, Joe, was 13 years old, I came home to a police car in my driveway and the first words I heard as I jumped out of the car wondering why in the world the police were at my house, were…”the suspect has been apprehended”. I was flabbergasted to see my young son in the police car with a terrified look on his face. Here is the story. Joe and the other kid had mutually decided that they would “fight” each other after school. (The minds of 13 year olds!) The “fight” lasted all of about a minute because they decided it was not so much fun. The other boy’s father called the police and said that Joe has assaulted his son. The police picked up my son at another neighbor’s house where he was playing basketball. The only way the police could identify him was he was the only black boy. While the situation ended without an arrest, the police told Joe that if he happened again he would “cuff him”. It was truly scary and we always wondered if the father of the other boy would have called the police if Joe was white or if he would have sought us out to resolve the situation without the police.
Joe, who is a Harvard, Duke, Princeton graduate is now an assistant professor of religion at UNC Charlotte. He was his high school class valedictorian, an athlete and a genuinely good person (I know I am biased but I hear this from many others…smile). I give you this background because when Joe was a student at Harvard, he and some of his classmates who also happened to be Black were studying late one night in a commons area on campus. A security guard called police because of what he described as “suspicious” behavior.
I don’t want us to lose the point that Trayvon Martin represents all Black men in America who have to every day of their lives, think about what they can do, where they can go, how they are being perceived. I could tell you of many other situations that my son encountered. I just selected two to make the illustration. As a mother of a young Black man, I too live in constant fear that he will be safe, that somebody might see him as a threat, fear for their lives just because of his very presence and existence.
Regardless of how the “law” decides the Trayvon Martin case, let us use this example to continue to teach each other not to judge by looks, dress, color of one’s skin, age, etc. It is so sad that our inability to get this diversity thing right continues to lead to the loss of innocent lives. I don’t care what the law says, George Zimmerman was wrong. The 911 directive was clear: “We don’t need you to follow him.”
Trayvon Martin is my son’s voice and the voice of all Black sons.
Image credit: Haraz N. Ghanbari, AP
