I have not been able to fully express my feelings and thoughts on the murder of Trayvon Martin until today. For the past 2 weeks I have been unable to sleep on a normal schedule. Staying up to the dawn of the morning and finally getting a few hours of sleep in the afternoon until I have to wake up for work.
My soul is not at peace right now. If it is the year of 2012, the only things to remind of that is the modern technology of my computer, TV, and cell phone in my home right now; anything else would have told me that this was still 1952 and that it was still "okay" to lynch black men and women "Down South".
Until it happens, you can't understand it.... racism that is. Until it happens, you don't realize it exists. You want to feel like your skin color or any one's skin color is attributing factor to the treatment they may receive... but feelings aren't reality. The fact is, everyday, I'm black. Everyday my skin never changes color and when people look at me they make judgements upon me because of the way I look, the way I'm dressed, the way I talk, the way I move, the way I carry myself.
People constantly make judgements on appearance, that's the way we're wired. Our first sense is eyesight. It triggers taste, smell, touch, and emotional responses. So when people look at me, when people look at you, when George Zimmerman looked at Trayvon, something triggers inside of them... emotionally. And for George Zimmerman... that was fear and hate.
Gated communities. Gated communities are no safer than a prison when the people inside of them are just as hateful, fearful, and vigilante as a criminal. People in these types of communities think they are safer inside of them because they are guarded from the "outsiders". These types of communities promote racial and economic "homogeneity" meaning if you "don't look like us or have money like us" we don't except you. So when something or someone breaks that ideal it instills panic, fear, a state of heightened alert, as well as the idea of superiority over whatever, or in this case, whomever would be defector from the false normalcy within the gates.
Gated communities are nothing but reincarnations of the segregated communities of the Jim Crow era; White folks on this side of town... Black folks & Others on the other side. And don't be a Black man or boy on the wrong side of town, at the wrong time of day, otherwise you'll be questioned, and if you didn't answer the question right or had proof you were "allowed" to be on the "white" side... consider yourself guilty... trial by hanging.
So this is what they did to our baby, our future, our beautiful young man Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman lynched him, he murdered Trayvon.
Riled up by the fear, by the anger, by the superiority he felt in the gated community of his mind, combined with a 9mm gun.
He MURDERED Trayvon Martin.
He thought Trayvon was burglar, but walking down a side walk in a gated community is not a crime. He says it was self defense, but being scared to answer the 310 lbs. man in front of you asking you questions isn't assault. He thinks it wasn't murder, but Trayvon Martin screaming for help tells me that it was.
The bottom line is Trayvon Martin is dead. A death not fit for anyone, but we should not let his death be in vain. Let's change the laws. Let's open our minds. Let's fight for justice. Arrest George Zimmerman.
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