On February 26th, 2012, the world lost a young African-American boy by the name of Trayvon Martin. Unfortunately, Trayvon’s death was not an accident. The story has been all over the news since the day he died and continues to be to this day.
17-year-old Trayvon was staying with his father when he died. On the day of his death, Trayvon was walking home from a convenience store in Sanford, Florida, when he was noticed by a neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman. Zimmerman called the police and reported sighting a “suspicious guy”. The authorities told him to stay in his car and not follow the boy, but he did not listen.
Soon after, gunshots were heard and Zimmerman was found bleeding, claiming that he shot Trayvon out of self-defense. Zimmerman was then taken into custody but was later released. There have been many trials and questions about whether he is guilty or not ever since.
The Zimmerman-Martin case relates to our class because we have been talking about racial discrimination. Even back in the 1500s, Africans were discriminated against because of their skin and were slaves for many centuries. While Trayvon was obviously not a slave, he still underwent serious discrimination because of the color of his skin. He did not have any weapons on him at the time yet Zimmerman still considered him suspicious, only because he was black.
If you can’t tell from the previous paragraph, I thought Zimmerman’s accusation was based on pure racism and while there may have been a scuffle at the time of the shooting, Trayvon was unarmed and shooting him in “self-defense” seems drastic. Zimmerman shouldn’t have followed Trayvon in the first place because the police told him not to. Staying in his car like he was supposed to could’ve prevented the unnecessary and tragic death of Trayvon Martin.
The Trayvon Martin case is a very controversial topic, and I'm very surprised that you chose to blog about it. However, I can see your points and how this case can be seen as a case of racism. Racism certainly didn't end with the Civil Rights movement, just like slavery didn't end when the slave trade was declared illegal. It has also been suggested that this murder could have been triggered by Zimmerman's distaste for a certain "social class", not the entire black population. Zimmerman might have seen Martin's age and dress and used these other outward appearances to make the judgment that Trayvon was up to no good, as the Spanish wrongly judged the Indians they encountered based upon their simple attire. It's very sad that these themes from history that caused so much destruction and violence are still familiar to us today.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was very interesting because I remember seeing this story on the news. You made some really good points and I agree with you;racism was not acceptable in history and it is not acceptable now. It's hard to tell exactly what the real reason for Martin's death was, but I liked how you connected it to what we've learned in class. Your blog post was unique because you were one of the only people to tackle recent news stories, especially one as controversial as this. Great job.
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