I wasn’t compelled to participate in demonstrations where
people wore hoodies because – well – it wasn’t about the hoodie. When I taught
at an alternative school, hoodies were not allowed over the head. Strangers
then, knowing our building had security cameras, couldn’t pull up their hoods
for disguise before entering our school to do harm to our students. They would
have been stopped at the door. They’d have to be strangers to be unrecognized
by the security cameras because we knew our students even when they wore
hoodies. Hoodies worn up when it isn’t raining or cold sometimes is a disguise
to cover wrongdoing.
Sometimes the hoodie is a shield against the pain of the
world. Often, when students were bothered by something, they would pull their
hoods over their heads and scrunch down behind their self-imposed wall to shut
out the world. As a teacher, I saw it as a sure sign of depression – or even Depression.
The hoodie was a signal that the student needed counseling as soon as s/he was
able to leave his/her shelter. Sometimes the student needed help just to get
out from under there. Male students, especially, shelter this way because they
didn’t want people to see the sorrow well from their eyes.
The hoodie was one of the reasons George Zimmerman targeted
Trayvon Martin for suspicion but the hoodie is not the reason he was killed.
When we reduce Trayvon’s death to the hoodie or use the hoodie as a symbol
against racism, we miss what’s important.
Although Trayvon Martin’s race and attire may have been
factors, even if he had been wearing no hoodie and had not been African
American, Zimmerman would have looked on him with suspicion because he was a
young man whom Zimmerman didn’t know who was inside a gated community that had
sheltered behind its own “hoodie” and set its residents up as vigilantes to do
what they felt the police had not. Zimmerman was part of a community in a state
that approved this attitude and guaranteed no consequences should they act on
their fears.
That’s why Zimmerman ignored the police directive to not
follow Trayvon Martin. The police had not stopped previous thefts in that
neighborhood and they could not keep Zimmerman from getting their job done. Not
only was the Florida law on his side, his might was his right.
Many people argue Trayvon Martin’s innocence: “He was just
going home with a bag of Skittles in his pocket.” Or “He had a right to be
where he was.” What if Trayvon Martin had been a thief scoping out his next
target? Then would it then have been okay for Zimmerman to shoot him? Was
whatever he might have stolen more valuable than his young life? I say that
Trayvon’s innocence or guilt doesn’t matter. Nothing justifies Zimmerman’s
response.
Zimmerman said that Trayvon Martin attacked him first and
that he, Zimmerman, feared for his life. Apparently, the jury believed him.
(More later – in another blog -- on the all white jury.) Zimmerman’s well-being
was threatened when he made himself a gun-carrying vigilante. He put himself in
danger when he left his car in pursuit of his own personal sense of justice.
The police who advised Zimmerman clearly understood this potential but the
untrained Zimmerman certainly did not. This education gap is just another
danger of vigilantism.
Siege mentality, fear of the stranger, high value on
material possessions, low value on human life, and laws that not only feed
those fears and values but also make weapons easily available to add fuel to
the emotions: this was the volatile catalyst leading to a bad ending for two
young men.
And all some people want to talk about is the hoodie.
