So now there’s ‘Living while Black’ rules
26th March 2012 · 0 Comments
By Tonyaa Weathersbee
Guest Columnist
Call it the slaying that could kill off most, if any, post-racial imaginings in this country.
Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Sanford, Florida, last month by George Zimmerman, a white Latino whose frequent 911 calls and profane comments show that he had a fixation against young Black males, that the mere act of them walking in his neighborhood was enough for him to brand them as suspects.
And since that time, Trayvon’s family hasn’t received any justice, but a dose of ineptness fueled by white privilege.
Each day, it’s becoming clearer that Zimmerman’s claims of self-defense are a crock. The latest evidence of that is a cell phone call that Trayvon made to his girlfriend, in which she said he told her that he “was being hounded by a strange man on a cell phone who ran after him, cornered him and confronted him.”
That throws some serious doubt on Zimmerman’s tale about Trayvon jumping him from behind.
Still, he hasn’t been arrested—and Sanford police, in fact, seem to have bent over backwards to protect Zimmerman. They didn’t check out his lie that he had never had a police record, and they concealed the 911 tapes for days.
On top of that, Police Chief Bill Lee even tacitly blamed Trayvon for his own death. According to the Miami Herald, he said, “I’m sure if George Zimmerman had the opportunity to relive Sunday, February 26, he’d probably do things differently. I’m sure Trayvon would, too.”
Like what, Chief? Put on white makeup? Bow and scrape to assuage whatever unfounded, racist suspicions that Zimmerman might have had?
Yet, from what I’m hearing from some Black parents who don’t want their sons to die, Trayvon’s slaying is causing them to adhere to rules that almost amount to that.
That means rules like them not riding more than three or four to a car, so that they don’t attract the attention of police officers, or, for that matter, community watch people.
It means things like keeping their hands in plain view all the time, so that no one has a reason to think they’re hiding a gun anywhere.
That angers me.
It angers me because in this age of President Obama, Black parents are now compelled to coach their sons on how to behave in front of white people who insist on seeing them as criminals first, on how to restrict their movements and their actions so they don’t give the Zimmermans of this world an excuse to kill them.
It angers me that in 2012, an expectant mother like Quianna Rashada, whom the Herald interviewed and who lives with her husband in the gated community where Trayvon was killed, cries at the thought of her child possibly having to live in that kind of world.
And it especially angers me that it’s taking massive protests and an investigation by the Justice Department to get any justice in this matter.
Then again, on another level, I guess this shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Since President Obama was elected, racists have gone into overdrive trying to protect their privilege by clinging to lies and stereotypes about Black people.
It can be seen in the ignorance of people who insist that Obama is a Muslim or that he wasn’t born in the United States. They feel privileged enough to bypass hard facts that don’t fit with whatever stereotype they feel comfortable with.
And what it all points to is that no matter how much we want to live in a so-called post-racial society, there will always be an element out there who will never see Black people, especially Black males, as being accomplished or worthy. Rather, they will always see people like Obama through the prism of illegitimacy and boys like Trayvon through the prism of suspicion.
Ultimately, Zimmerman must be brought to justice. Because as much as many Americans love to scream about protecting freedom, this country will never be a free place for all its citizens if Black parents have to counsel their sons on how to move about or how many friends they can ride with so that they don’t wind up being stalked and killed by a white person who sees them as criminals first.
This article was originally published in the March 26, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper
