Did Trayvon “Have It Coming”?
Trayvon Martin had it coming.
We read those words to that effect from an article linked to by a libertarian website we visit very regularly.
“In Zimmerman’s case, Martin was an athletic six-foot-two-inch tall football player that had him on his back pounding on him. Martin got what he deserved.”
So wrote Paul Huebl, a former Chicago cop and proud member of the Screen Actors Guild.
We’ve tried to avoid having to write anything publicly about the shooting of Trayvon Martin. It’s too obvious a move for the black anarcho-libertarian to spout off on the matter. But we feel we must let our thoughts be known…
You see, dear patron, we spent a few years of our adolescence in the Central Florida town just south of where Trayvon was killed. We have some experience with being black in that corner of the world.
Further, the public voices who dwell close to our philosophical sphere seem to be saying some questionable things in their rush to defend gun ownership and denounce sleazy race-baiters like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.
Like Thomas Sowell, the black conservative and intellectual who agreed with Geraldo Rivera’s advice to black and Hispanic youth to not dress to look so threatening.
First a few things about that part of Florida…
Like Caesar’s Gaul, Florida is divided into three parts…
South Florida as centered around the Miami-Dade metro area is essentially a continental Latin and Caribbean colony.
Central Florida is dominated of course by Orlando. It’s bloodless and its claim to fame is a tourist trap ruled over by a mouse created by a Nazi-sympathizer.
People often say that Florida isn’t really “The South”. And they’re right. But North Florida isn’t really part of Florida as much as it is the southernmost region of Georgia.
Once you head north of Orlando, the descendants of Castro-generated refugees and Jewish retirees become a distant spectacle. Much more immediate are the Confederate flags, monster trucks and occasional white supremacist tattoo.
Geneva, Florida, is just a few miles north of Orlando and a few miles east of Sanford, Florida, where George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin to death.
Through a series of crises and accidents your editor came to spend his early teen years as a resident of Geneva. The town is home to just a couple thousand souls or so. The downtown has a section full of older homes, a section of newer tract homes (where your editor lived), three churches, an elementary school, a couple of gas stations, one post office, one feed store and one stoplight.
The rest of the place is a smattering of multi-acre properties, dirt roads and swamp.
While Sanford lies directly east, Oviedo, FL, is just south and to the west. Oviedo is a very nice, suburb of Orlando. It made at least one “100 Best to Live in the U.S.” list one year. The road from Oviedo becomes Geneva’s First Street. There is a specific moment as you travel along that road that you sense you’ve crossed some ethereal veil. It happens within a second or two of leaving the “Welcome to Oviedo” sign behind.
The new, colorful subdivisions stop abruptly. Wide open pastures take their place. Tiny herds of cattle and the occasional horse or two alternate with lone houses in big fields as you drive along.
You notice more pickup trucks, quite a few of them on giant tires. The few other cars you see on the two-lane road move more aggressively.
Twenty years ago when your editor’s mother bought one of those newer tract homes, one of the neighbors painted “NO NIGER” in huge red letters on our mother’s garage door. We assume the vandal meant “NO NIGGER”, but we also assume it was also dark when he wrote it and he lost track of how many g’s he’d already written.
A few months later someone left a pathetic attempt at a chemical bomb on the front porch of our family’s house. Our mother called the sheriff. The deputies told her that had the bomb worked, it might have killed her.
That was all over twenty years ago. But just a few years ago the son of the other black Caribbean family in town was carrying his own young son on his shoulders when he was run over by one of our neighbors.
The brother and his son survived with only minimal injury. The neighbor went to jail for a long time. The attack was racially motivated.
Back in January, 2010 we were visiting the old homestead, we were hit by a speeding truck as we walked along the road just beyond our mother’s house. The hit was surely accidental. It was the response of everyone involved that made us mad. And reminded us what the life of a black man is worth in that town.
The driver stopped, ran over to our prone form and asked us angrily what we were doing “in the middle of the road” as we lay moaning on the lawn where we’d landed. The owner of the home also seemed mad that we had landed on his lawn and had created trouble for the driver. Once we recovered our senses and realized that we were neither dead nor crippled, a fight very nearly ensued.
To heap even more insult to our relatively minor injuries, the emergency crew who came out (at our mother’s insistence, not our own) seemed annoyed at us, too.
We never lived in neighboring Sanford itself. But we spent an awful lot of time there. On the way to the city itself from Geneva, there is a little “Chocolate Village” called appropriately enough Midway. A poor black neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. Out of the 1700 or so people who live there 1600 are black while only a few dozen are white.
Sanford itself is a much bigger town with over 50,000 residents. Over half of those are white and a little less than a third black. The black population is largely concentrated in the Goldsborough neighborhood.
Sanford’s neck isn’t quite as red as Geneva’s, but there is still that uniquely Southern flavor of black-white tension on the air. Your editor can taste it every time he lands at Orlando International Airport. It increases the farther north you go from the airport and from Orlando. You could choke on it in Geneva. It’s not as bad in Sanford, but it’s still there.
Here’s an anecdote not from personal experience, but culled from the Wikipedia page on Sanford:
“On October 23, 1945, the Brooklyn Dodgers announced that they had signed Jackie Robinson assigning him to their International League team, the Montreal Royals.
“Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager believing he ‘knew’ Florida, thought his team could train there ruffling as few feathers as possible. Robinson and his wife were instructed by Rickey not to try to stay at any Sanford hotels. He and his wife didn’t eat out at any restaurants not deemed ‘Negro restaurants.’ He didn’t even dress in the same locker room as his teammates.
“As soon as the citizenry became aware of Robinson’s presence, the mayor of Sanford was confronted by a ‘large group of white residents’ who ‘demanded that Robinson…be run out of town.’
“On March 5th, 1946, the Royals were informed that they would not be permitted to take the field as an integrated group. Rickey was concerned for Robinson’s life and sent him to stay in Daytona Beach. His daughter, Sharon Robinson, remembered being told, ‘The Robinsons were run out of Sanford, Florida, with threats of violence.’”
“In his 1993 book, ‘A Hard Road to Glory: A History Of The African American Athlete: Baseball’ tennis great Arthur Ashe wrote in response, Rickey ‘moved the entire Dodger pre-season camp from Sanford, Florida, to Daytona Beach due to the oppressive conditions of Sanford.’”
We share these anecdotes so you understand our bias. And not so much to explain Zimmerman’s actions — he was an overzealous cop wannabe whose stereotyping got him in over his head — but to explain the police response.
Black life doesn’t hold so much value in the region Trayvon was killed. And we sadly report that it often doesn’t have much value in the eyes of people with whom we tend to agree on other things like liberty and the right to bear arms.
It saddens us to be on the side of the national healthcare types on this one. (But again, we’re neither conservative nor liberal in any modern sense, but in love with liberty and the markets they foster.) Even if Trayvon got violent with Zimmerman…even if Zimmerman was getting the worst of it in a scuffle…he was the aggressor. He gave Trayvon reason to feel the need to defend himself. Zimmerman was the one “acting suspiciously.”
(Zimmerman also strikes us the type who admired authoritarian power and made up for his inadequacies by carrying a gun. But we don’t know the man personally and could be wrong. His idea of self-defense, however, seems in line with U.S. foreign policy: antagonize and escalate after the violent response.)
Lest you get us wrong, we believe in the right to bear arms to be as essential as the right to own property and to do as you will with your own body. We also believe in the absolute right to self defense and to stop violence toward your person and property with force.
But that doesn’t mean you get to create the situation in which you have to defend yourself.
Zimmerman is not white. Not really. But he stands in for all the white “conservatives” out there whose love of freedom extends only as far their right to bear arms. It doesn’t cover the non-white elements in “their” country, nor the Ay-rab countries their “conservative” political actors attack.
So no, Zimmerman isn’t white. But he has become the avatar for a large swath of the population who will never under any circumstances be sorry to see the Second Amendment used to lay waste to a young black man who probably had it coming.
Had Trayvon or any other black man behaved as Zimmerman had toward a white person…if a white man had been beating on then been shot by a black man who had been shadowing him…That is to say, if the races of the actors had been reversed (again counting the “white Hispanic” Zimmerman as a stand in for the white Second Amendment lovers who fantasize about some black punk giving them an excuse), then the gun rights crowd would be singing the opposite tune.
They would have decried the black man for stalking the white man in the first place. They would have cheered the white man for pummeling his black stalker. They would have called for justice for the fallen white man and for the imprisonment and even death of the black shooter.
As it is many liberty and guns types see a smoking gun and big, dead, black kid and honestly don’t see a problem. They can’t believe the rush to judgment. Granted, the media is making the usual circus of this…And those charlatans Sharpton and Jackson are all over this like flies on a corpse…
And maybe therein lies the problem. Being black has become so politicized. The state is so involved in being black that blacks can’t help but live politicized lives. And have the occasional politicized death.
Economic integration — being useful in the marketplace — was resulting in social integration before WWI. Then along came the state with its wedge in the form of Jim Crow laws. So after the state prevented the natural integration of white and black, it took it upon itself to force integration at a later date. To make it a violent political matter when markets had been doing it peaceably.
After making integration as violent as possible, the state further amplified the divide between blacks and whites. It’s the state that cripples blacks with the crack cocaine of welfare. It corrals the visible mass of them in public housing and rewards them for creating one-parent homes. It traps their children in bottom-of-the-barrel public schools where they learn nothing.
After public education destroys their minds and welfare destroys their work ethic, the state creates quotas to get unqualified blacks into the job market. This only increases resentment from whites. Meanwhile blacks are kept from any meager but honest employment by means of minimum wage laws.
These laws strongly discourage employers from hiring anyone whose labor isn’t worth at least the minimum the government sets. If an employer MUST pay at least $7.25 per hour and a young black man’s skills are only worth, say, $5.00 per hour (because he is a product of public schooling, public housing and welfare), then that young black man will simply not be hired. That young black man will be further driven away from becoming a contributing member in the markets and therefore civil society.
Also the state persecutes blacks mercilessly when they engage in the most attractive trade available to the majority who won’t make it in music or sport, a trade that exists because of unreasonable prohibitions on human choice.
So the state does everything to shape dependent and resentful adults. Then the state’s wage controls keep young black people out of the labor market. Then it punishes them harshly for engaging in the black markets it creates with its senseless prohibition, often setting them on a lifelong cycle of incarceration.
The state has helped craft members of the black race into objects of hate. Parasites in weird dress, speaking in alien tongues. Their natural habitat is surely the prison, where more today reside than were enslaved in the early 19th century.
By “helping” blacks, the state turns them into subhuman caricatures. By making them its wards, the state creates a concentration of hopeless, dangerous, ignorant poverty with its own subculture and dialect. The state creates a population that the white majority views with unease at best and hatred at the worst.
So black men will always “have it coming” in the eyes of many in the liberty and guns crowd (to which your dark-skinned editor belongs). As long as so many black lives are shaped by the state’s inherently destructive assistance black men will always be deserving of suspicion in the eyes of those who have no biological urge to view them as extended members of the human family.
It’s natural enough for humans to identify along lines of kinship. Ethnicity is just extended family after all. And it’s unreasonable to expect people not to favor family. But the market provides a civilizing effect by rewarding cooperation, providing mutual gain and creating tolerance for those who aren’t related to us and don’t share our exact tastes. We manage to get along with each other in the market place where we interact and are rewarded for serving each other well.
Politics will have none of this. It thrives by amplifying divisions, creating social friction within and war without. Where markets demand peace and cooperation, politics demands conflict, otherness and hatred of it.
“Look at him!” the whites with guns cry about slain Trayvon. “He looks like a thug!” Tall, athletic, wearing that black dress code. Gold teeth. He was already dealing with that plant the government doesn’t like, according to the reports.
Nowhere in all this do those who are satisfied with Trayvon’s death say what Trayvon was actually doing to warrant Zimmerman’s attentions. Besides walking at night while black.
They will often ask what Trayvon Martin was even doing in a gated community. They sniff out the marijuana possession and the more recent Facebook photos. But they seem to have keep missing the part of the story that explained that Trayvon was on his way back to his father’s house in that gated community. They mock as biased the sympathetic note in the media’s voice, then cherry pick the parts of the story that suits their practiced narrative.
Trayvon was walking back home. But he had the misfortune of looking like the state-fostered cartoon that stirs the base, clannish reaction within whites.
“Hell, if I’d seen him there,” the white ones who tend to have the guns say, “I’d have wanted to confront him, too. And I wouldn’t have lost a wink of sleep over shooting him.”
Perhaps the only acceptable behavior from black men is to avoid areas where they’d make whites nervous, especially at night. Should they be confronted by a non-white, the only correct response is apologetic submission.
Maybe it’s not enough that black men not wear hoodies. Perhaps the good ones ought to wear iron collars to let non-whites know they are not looking for trouble, are not dangerous and can be trusted.
Regards,
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Gary Gibson
Gary Gibson is the managing editor for Whiskey and Gunpowder. He joins the Whiskey staff as a long-time fan and reader of both Whiskey and Gunpowder and the Daily Reckoning. A graduate of Fordham University, Gary now spends his days reading about and writing on limited government, sound money, personal responsibility and resource investing.
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tl;dr version:
It goes against all my instincts to liberty and rule of law, but since Martin looks sorta like me, I’m going to fall on his side.
If this is how weak this production’s ties to liberty are, I might be done here.
Some times it’s just hard to know what really happened. but I wonder…
NOT many people are discussing the fear and threat a young kid would feel when somebody is agresively following them for a long time in the evening – talking on his phone about a “dangerous person up to know good” – and even if you can’t hear that anger you can see it in the “stalkers” expressions. and when you confront your stalker you see he has a gun!! oh no, scream “help”?
Now that voice “diagnosis” has said it is the voice of MARTIN yelling “help help” for quite a while before the shot, makes one wonder if Martin had a right to defend himself or ONLY if he had a gun or ONLY if he’s or ONLY if he’s losing a fist fight (he didn’t start) OR only if he’s the “stalker”???
I don’t read this as being on Trayvon’s “side” because of his race. I see the point of it being that it is equally wrong to say Trayvon deserved it as it is to say that Zimmerman is guilty of a racial / hate crime. I appreciate the context given. Clearly, Zimmerman should have obeyed the police and avoided the tragic outcome.
Thank you for providing more of the local context, and that of the American black experience. I think many tend to ignore the cause and effect while focusing entirely on the end results.
Gary, sometime I am truly ashamed of my race. I attended a talk yesterday by Prof. Richard Dawkins and a young white man in the audience was wearing a t-shirt I absolutely love. “WE ARE ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS”. Saying Amen at a Richard Dawkins speech was a little out of place, so I gave the young man a high five.
Thank you for this article.
Marti, your genealogical cousin
Mr. Gibson, thank you for an insightful, and level headed background story. So many people, both black and white have no idea the state of things in some parts of the country. You’ve just revealed, at the very least a small picture into one of those areas.
Bob
Gary, thank you for sharing our experience so gracefully. We had many close calls. Thankfully we made it out of Geneva alive. Great post!!
Funny how those with strong ties to liberty don’t think Trayvon had the liberty to walk home without being molested by an armed thug with a gun.
As your family member, I am biased, great article. But then, I lived in Geneva as well, and as a member of Seminole County NAACP, know countless of episodes like Trayvon.
Maybe just having it out in the open will help. Maybe others will not have to teach their black sons just how little value this country places on their lives.
We teach our children to protect themselves when approached by strangers. Trayvon did ask, why are you following me? So who was the aggressor. You cannot claim self-deffense when you are loosing a fight you started, if there was a fight. Trayvon’s hands showed no signs of it. So maybe, just maybe, justice will be served. Maybe….
I have a CA concealed carry permit. It is not a license grant yourself police powers, to follow, confront, brandish a firearm or shoot at suspicious people. It is a license to carry and use a firearm to defend yourself when your life is in imminent danger and you have no other reasonable alternative like fleeing. It is also legal to defend others who are physically threatened during the commission of a felony.
FL may have a more liberal law in ‘stand your ground’ but it in no way can be construed to allow this sort of provocative, reckless, unnecessary and murderous action. This clown needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. It is outrageous he was not arrested.
I don’t believe this was some sort of ‘hate’ crime, it more than likely is simply the consequence of a misguided individual who lacks reasonable judgement. To blithely allow his actions to be equated with liberty and rule of law is preposterous. He needs to be held accountable for instigating actions that led to him taking a 17 year old’s life, the first step in that should have been an arrest and a subsequent investigation, followed by a trial or complete and full explanation if he is to be exonerated.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience and setting Travon’s story in its proper context. The media is selling papers, a young man is dead, his killer becomes a twisted folk hero and the political circus continues. We all lose. As a white man who married and loves his black wife this incident hits close to home. Although we live in a liberal part of the country she gets eyed by the cops every time they see her driving her Mercedes. Its been very eye opening to me how race flavors our experience as a married couple all the time, anyone who thinks this was resolved in the 60′s is deluded.
RIP Travon… you could have been my son
Good column, Gary, as far as it went.
You know the area and have lived close by.
But it seems to me the larger question is that while TM didn’t “have it coming” per se, does that let him off the hook entirely? Sounds to me like he was the one that responded first with pre-emptive violence in this particular episode of wanna be gang banger meets wanna be cop. (Granted not all cops are honorable, but it is an honorable profession as compared to gangbanging which doesn’t even come close. )
Further TM wasn’t visiting his father’s house. It was his father’s girlfriend and if TM was the new kid in the neighborhood, minding your p’s and q’s would be the cool thing to do until you were acclimatized.
FTM I ain’t “AA” and I ain’t gonna apologize for it, but I can’t remember how many times I used to get stopped by the cops when I was younger and walking around at night in my own neighborhood. It was unconstitutional and yada yada yada all that, but it is what it is on the street, if not that it sounded like TM had a chip on his shoulder. Well, guess what, pal. It ain’t fair, but that’s what happens.
And if there were a lot of break ins in the development, what else would you expect but somebody is gonna stop and say, Hey what’s up? You looking for somebody? Can I help you ? etc. Some time the concern is genuine/legit and sometimes it means somebody is looking for an excuse to fight. Like we all haven’t run into both?
All in all a sad situation, that has been politicized to the max with the usual bad actors coming to the fore and behaving despicably as well as being promoted by the lick spittle leftist lynch mob media. Rodney King better call his copyright lawyer because one wrong makes another wrong (riot) right and our current chief executive now has a cause celebre to run on instead of the economy.
cheers
Mr. Bob S.,
His name is Trayvon Martin, not TM. Please let me know what you mean when you say TM had it coming and specify a reason? I do not care what you read about Trayvon Martin, there was no reason he was followed other than the fact that he was profiled. Had he not been profiled, he would be alive! Is it relevant whether or not his father lived there? His fiance lived there and he and Trayvon were welcomed guess and should not have needed to answer to Mr. Zimmerman just to simply be safe while walking home, minding his own business. Obviously when the justice system show such little regard for black lives, we do what we can to get our voices heard. I find it rather tasteless to bring up Rodney King, and threw in a punch for President Obama, the issue at hand is Trayvon Martin. People are outraged and it has nothing to do with President Obama. By the way, he is human and has a right to voice his opinion just as you have. Remember Trayvon was 17 years old and like most human beings not perfect, and same goes for Mr. Zimmerman. Big difference being Trayvon and Zimmerman is he cannot tell his side of the story because a trigger happy coward has taken that right away from him. Thank God that true justice is not in the hands of those in authority because Trayvon Martin’s death would be in vain! I keep hearing the ignorant comments such as yours, some even go as far to say that blacks kill blacks all the time, and it truly amazes me. If a black person kills a black person more than likely it had nothing to do with just simply having a fear of one another and the powers that be are not botching investigations and trying to cover up their own. I know that law enforcement would go to the wire trying to make an arrest. Trayvon’s case is totally different and there are many more Trayvon’s, but usually law enforcements do a better job at covering their tracks. It’s amazing that you feel Trayvon had it coming and you can conclude that he initiated the violence, but it’s not okay for us who do not believe Zimmerman’s account to voice our opinion, we are jumping to conclusion! What’s good for the goose should be good for the gander! Praying that justice is served Mr. Bob and so should you.
*guests* correction
… and here we find the recipe for destroying liberty.
Ms. Coakley,
The “had it coming” phrase is the theme of Gary’s article. He argues against it in that he would consider himself libertarian, but not the kind of “libertarian” that would make that kind of comment.
At least that is how I read the article. It is not my phrase or belief per se.
I merely had some questions further as in, aside from the background and context, did Trayvon bear any responsibility at all for what happened?
My guess is you think he didn’t.
For my part, while I consider the whole thing pretty sad, neither do I think Trayvon the sainted martyr some seem to think he is or want to make him out to be.
IOW while it sounds like there is a lot of racism down there round Sanford, some questions that might reasonably follow would include:
Did white racism cause Trayvon to aspire to the gol teef and the tatoo or the in general gangbanger attitude as signified in the Facebook name he chose for himself, No_Limit_Nigga?
What about the rest of the local black community? Do they aspire to these same kind of things or not?
Why or why not? Is it because of white people or something else?
And if blacks kill more blacks and whites than whites kill whites or blacks, is there any basis for the bias/prejudice/racism that whites have toward blacks? Further what are blacks doing to police the minority of their members that are screwing up their image and reputation in the eyes of white folks? Or is that just more white racist manipulation of the FBI crime statistics?
I don’t know, but I think the answer to all the above is probably not as cut and dried and black and white that we might all like it to be.
But I would still rather discuss it at this level than put up with Duke and the Dauphin of racial peace, love and harmony, along with the rest of the MSM yapping heads, on the hi-def flat screen TV. Which is yet another reason why I don’t have one.
Thank you.
Man, I agree with what you are saying. I am a very large white dude, I was in the military, and it was easy to see that black guys did not trust me, or want to hang out while I was in. I am very athletic, and could more then hold my own in any sport, yet when we were done playing for the team, we all went our seperate ways. It was sad really. I liked the guys on my teams, but my skin color made them uneasy. I am frm the midwest, and I grew up with this sense from black people that I did not fit in their circle? I came to accept it, cause I could not change it. I agree with you 100% on your view of how the government halted natural de-segregation, to give us all a de-segregation we did not deserve. With all the hype, and portrayal of blacks as victims and not overcomers, the mindset is really deep with most of the black men and women I served with. They seemed to think I owed them something, my sons mother is black, and they did not like that one bit. I noticed that they did not want anything to do with me then. I have no hatred f anyone because of their skin colr, but only when they choose to hate from somewhere so superficial.
I met the tuskegee airmen, and they seemed to warm up to me no problem. We were able to talk from what seemed like hours. It made me wonder what their life was like. Here are men who overcame grievous persecution due to their skin color, but they did not give me the sense of underlying racial hatred(or at least apathy) that I got from my black peers.
About this Trayvon fiasco, I agree with you almost one hundred percent. What keeps my judgement reserved at the moment is the reporting that he may have broken into school lockers causing one of his suspensions. Considering that he went through his parents divorce, I don’t find it hard to believe a youth of any color could get rebelious after that kind of pain. However, when you roll a certain way, you walk a certain way. The undctored pictures, and reporting of his last year of life, portray a young man who wanted to test what it was like to play the bad boy. Those sorts of changes reveal themselves in a myriad of ways. One of which is looking like an intimidating, suspicious(mysterious) person. He was most likely just getting a snack. But the choices he “seems” to have madeover the past year or two, may have started to become him. Reading his supposed twitter account reads like someone who is very angry at the word, and himself. I know I have seen people from all walks of life “walk with a chip n yur shoulder.” I’ve done it, and at my size, people mve out of my way, they dn’t know how nice f a guy I am. But how yu prtray yurself is how people see you. Sadly, Trayvon’s first impression t a stranger lead to his death. It is truly tragic! The way the media, Obama, the “reverend-wannabe” twins are using this is beynd shameful.but what do we expect from opportunists? Before we know it, the smooth talking guy we thought we could trust, turns into the liar we shuld have always known he was! All the young black men, killed by other young black men, is never discussed by them! Nor the abuse of power family court has wielded over their lives! We are in very dire straights in these times, and we always see the frame, but miss the picture!
My keyboard is breaking, sorry fr the typos.
I lay a lot of the blame on the “left” brainwashing that tells women and blacks that anytime someone “hurts their feelings”, “disrespects them” or simply does something they don’t like then it is acceptable for them to respond with violence since they are somehow “oppressed” and nothing bad has ever happened to a white man. Andrew Wordes of Roswell, Ga suffered REAL persecution by the state not Trayvon.
Whether or not Zimmerman was following him. Whether Zimmerman called him a “coon” or “punk”. Whether or not that part of Florida is full of “racists”. Whether Trayvon was eating or talking on the phone is all irrelevant. All logical fallacies meant to cloud the real issue.
Trayvon was in the wrong for resorting to violence FIRST over something as trivial (and not illegal) as a resident approaching him to talk to him. Once Trayvon decided to move from talk to bashing Zimmerman’s against the concrete. Zimmerman had a right to be in fear for his life and defend himself.
Hard for us to tell exactly what happened. That’s why (in theory) the accused gets a fair trial, to find out what really happened.
I enjoyed the background on the area and the racial tensions. First I’ve read of that.
Unfortunately, I think all this violence would have happened no matter what color the skin. Violent people will kill anyone eventually.
Mr. Gibson, thank you for a superbly insightful and well-presented article. If more people were of such keen and balanced mind, I should be immensely proud to be a member of this, our human race!
I do not believe Zimmerman should automatically be considered the aggressor. Zimmerman was acting in his capacity as a neighborhood watchman. He was given that duty by his neighbors. Does Zimmerman have a wannabe cop mentality? Absolutely. What’s wrong with that? That mind-set would make him an effective neighborhood watchman. That’s likely why his neighbors liked the idea of appointing him watchman.
There were a series of burglaries in the area and the suspects were described by witnesses as young and black. Zimmerman saw Martin – did not recognize him as someone from the neighborhood – followed him – contacted police for support, not because Martin was black (In fact, as documented in the 911 call, Zimmerman is unsure of Martins race, which rules out profiling) but, because his instincts interpreted Martins behavior as suspicious. The police dispatcher suggested to Zimmerman not to continue to follow Martin. Zimmerman was under no obligation to follow that suggestion. Matter of fact, Zimmerman’s choice to continue surveillance was the right choice. That’s within the scope of his duties as neighborhood watchman.
By the girlfriends account of the phone call between her and Martin, Martin tells her that Zimmerman was watching him. It seems at this point, from what the girlfriend said, Martin pulled his hoodie up over his head, an act that any reasonable person should interpret as a deliberate act to conceal his identity. An odd thing for a individual who has nothing to hide to do, any reasonable person should agree.
Of course it was raining, but there is a certain significance in that action of putting the hoodie up and telling the girlfriend that he was putting the hoodie up, at the same time as telling his girlfriend about being watched. The girl friend knows the hoodie went up at that point, because Martin told her he was putting it up. Martin and his girlfriend, at that point in the phone call, were not discussing the rain. They were discussing that fact that he was being watched. So, it is reasonable to conclude that the hoodie went up because he was being watched, and for no other reason, but to conceal his identity. Why does Martin feel he needs to conceal his identity? Any law enforcement officer certainly would have considered that act as suspicious. In a court of law concealing ones identity is prima facie evidence of guilt.
As the confrontation begins, the girlfriend heard Martin say the words, ” why are you following me”. From this account, it seems unlikely that Zimmerman caught up with Martin and made first contact, No, it’s more reasonable to conclude, considering Martin indicated to his girlfriend that he knew he was being watched by Zimmerman, that Martin likely realized that Zimmerman was close behind him, so he stopped or turned around to approach and make contact with Zimmerman.
The question by Martin “why are you following me” comes first according to the girlfriend. Then, according to her, she hears Zimmerman ask “what are you doing in the area” or something to that effect. If Zimmerman is actually chasing Martin and cornered him, as some use as the reasoning behind identifying Zimmerman as the aggressor, Zimmerman would have been the one who made the first contact, and his question would have been asked first.
I believe the girlfriends account indicates that Martin stopped or turned around to approach and confront Zimmerman. This puts Martin in the position of the aggressor.
What was the point in all your dialog. You ever hear about karma and reincarnation. The wheel of the 84. 84 lacs being 100,000 years each. Those souls will get it right sooner or later. In the mean time just talk about the facts please.
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