 by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. In the great classic film "Casablanca" (1942), Claude Rains plays a cynical French officer, Captain Renault, whose job, as he sees it, is to stay alive, live well and to get along, go along. Thus, he contributed one of the best lines in movie, maybe even human history when he tells his underlings to arrest the "usual suspects." Since Rains and his sophisticated weariness are nowhere to be seen in the matter of Trayvon Martin... I shall assume the role myself as it is a particular favorite of mine for we are both men of the world who haven't got a minute for what my solidly Midwestern grandma used to call "guff"... and there's been a world of it already in the Trayvon Martin case. The facts, so far. One of the most inconvenient aspects of any matter, especially high visibility murders, is the facts. Thus, the first thing sidewalk kibitzers do is to massage those nasty blighters, the better to make their case and fuel the fulminations they do so enjoy. As a trained Harvard historian, I adhere instead to the single-word motto of the world's greatest university -- "veritas" (truth) -- although nothing is more difficult than seeking it, discovering it, and adhering to it whilst all the other commentators have far more frolic and fun indulging themselves in the usual rodomontades, posturings, exclamations, expostulations, deceits, connivances, verbal by-plays and outright lies. Oh, yes, they have far more fun than mere truth tellers ever do, for we must strictly tread the straight and narrow path. Here is what happened February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida. Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old African-American male who was unarmed. George Zimmerman is a 28-year-old with Caucasian father and Hispanic mother. At the time of the fatal incident Zimmerman was a community watch coordinator. Martin was walking to the home of his father's girlfriend in a gated community where he was staying when Zimmerman began following him, while contacting the Sanford Police Department to say he witnessed what he described as suspicious behavior. The police told him to disengage, to let the police handle it. Yet soon afterward there was a confrontation that ended with Zimmerman fatally shooting Martin once in the chest at close range. The police enter the scene. When police arrived at the scene, Zimmerman told them he had shot Martin in self-defense because Martin had attacked him. According to police, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and had a wound at the back of his head. Responding officers took Zimmerman into custody, transporting him to the Sanford Police Department where he was questioned by investigators. Zimmerman was released without being charged because police said they did not find evidence to contradict his assertion of self-defense and that he acted within his right to self-defense under the Florida "stand your ground" law. The lead homicide investigator reportedly said he did not believe it was self-defense, and he wanted to charge Zimmerman with manslaughter, but the state attorney's office said there was insufficient evidence for a conviction. Later, in the face of growing indignation and because he had not followed explicit police instructions to back off as well as inconsistencies in his testimony, Zimmerman was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. All these facts are generally agreed. As is the fact that at his death young Trayvon Martin was wearing a black hooded garment commonly called a "hoodie"... and it is this garment, how used, how worn and what it represents that provides the fulcrum of this story... and here there is no general agreement at all. Only charges, countercharges, bitter claims, more bitter recriminations, every one generating far more heat than light. All about the hoodie, the provocative garment of young urban blacks of the 'hood. Throughout history, humans have worn hoods to disguise themselves whilst committing every unsavory act mastered by our species. Such hoods were also used to frighten, intimidate, and cow designated populations. In terrorist organizations as diverse as America's white-hooded Ku Klux Klan (founded in 1865) and Russia's black-hooded oprichniks (founded in 1564), the hood was always a tool of menace. Some folks, including the usual posse of self-appointed community leaders, axes to grind, anxious for another pointless round of envenomed accusations, will try to tell you that this was "racial profiling" pure and simple, a hate crime; that this garment is just an adolescent fashion, like bobby socks or greased hair. However this assertion is disingenuous in the extreme. The hoodie is the garment of choice of drug dealers, pimps, and criminals of every kind, people undermining Black communities right this minute, while reaching far beyond, to even greater destructiveness. Let's be clear: this garment is their uniform of choice, and is designed to do what such garments have always done: to intimidate, hide, confound, and alarm. No, this is not the newest fashion by Perry Ellis or Ralph Lauren. It is instead the chosen symbol of those who mean to subvert the law, incite violence, and create mayhem and dismay; those who wear and support this garment condone its history. This is the garment seen by George Zimmerman and in which young Martin had but minutes to live and in which he died, his life's blood trickling down his lithe body into the rich soil of Florida. What had gone so terribly wrong? Just this: the still unfinished business of racial dissonance, distrust, disharmony no longer tolerated in law is still in other forms so destructive and discernible today. Thus, this scenario: Martin wore what he wore to be "wicked cool", impress his lady, showing the support and adherence one home boy shows another. He meant no more than that, perhaps, but even that was provocation enough... George Zimmerman saw that garment very differently, seeing not cloth so rendered but clear evidence of destructive intent, an active threat to home and neighbors. And so two people who saw this single thing, this hoodie, so very differently played out their fate, their portion of the still unfinished racial business of the Great Republic... and here's the greatest irony. Had Zimmerman worn the hoodie.... and Trayvon Zimmerman's apparel... the one would not be notorious, not marked for life, the other not dead, but still among us. A plea for the humanity in each of us. Thus this plea, certain to be heard by the good people of the Great Republic, who have responded carefully, thoughtfully, generously before... and are called, yet again, to do so. We must not stop our work for racial harmony, racial empathy, racial understanding; though it has advanced.... it is not yet finished. For so long as there is racial dissonance anywhere, there is racial harmony nowhere. Moreover, until this corrosive, divisive matter is truly cleansed from the heart of everyone ... the Great Republic remains unfulfilled, incomplete, riven by mistrust, hobbled, not yet the living ideal we need and must have to complete our destiny and place at the forefront of our troubled world; a world where the unsettled spirits of two young men -- and all like them -- can never rest until this great matter is solved... and neither can we. |
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