Every parent raising Black sons knows the dilemma: deciding how soon to have the talk. Choosing the words to explain to your beautiful child that there are some people who will never like or trust him just because of who he isโincluding some who should be there to protect him, but will instead have the power to hurt him. Training him how to walk, what to say, and how to act so he wonโt seem like a threat. Teaching him that the burden of deflating stereotypes and reassuring other peopleโs ignorance will always fall on him, and while that isnโt fair, in some cases it may be the only way to keep him safe and alive.
But sometimes it isnโt enough. It wasnโt enough to protect Trayvon Martin. Seventeen-year-old Trayvonโs English teacher said he was โan A and B student who majored in cheerfulness.โ Trayvon loved building models and taking things apart, his favorite subject was math, and he dreamed of becoming a pilot and an engineer. Instead, he was gunned down by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain vigilante who profiled him, followed him, and shot him in the chest. His killer, George Zimmerman, saw the teenager on the street and called the police to report he looked โlike heโs up to no good.โ At the time Trayvon was walking home from the nearby 7-11 carrying a bottle of Arizona iced tea and a bag of Skittles for his younger stepbrother, leaving many people to guess that the main thing he was doing that made him look โno goodโ was wearing a hooded sweatshirt in the rain and walking while Black. George Zimmermanโs decisions made that suspicious enough to be a death sentence.
Now there is widespread outrage over the senseless killing of a young Black man who was doing nothing wrong and the fact that the man who killed him has not been arrested. People are trying to make sense of the series of gun laws that allowed George Zimmerman to act as he didโstarting with the Florida laws that allowed someone like Zimmerman, who had previously been charged for resisting arrest with violence and battery on a police officer, to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in the first place. Many more questions are being raised about Floridaโs โStand Your Groundโ law, which also has been described as the โshoot first, ask questions laterโ law, and gives the benefit of the doubt to Zimmerman and others claiming โself-defenseโ by allowing people who say they are in imminent danger to defend themselves. Some states limit this defense to peopleโs own homes, but others, like Florida, allow it anywhere.
As Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says, this law โhas turned common lawโand common senseโon its head by enabling vigilantes to provoke conflicts, resolve them with deadly force, and avoid ever having to set foot in a courtroom.โ The fear in Trayvonโs death is that this is exactly what has happened so far: that the story told by witnesses, phone records, and Zimmermanโs violent past and earlier complaints during his neighborhood patrols shows an overzealous armed aggressor who followed Trayvon even after police told him to stop, chased Trayvon down when the frightened boy tried to walk away from the stranger following him, and then shot the unarmed, 100-pounds-lighter teenager while neighbors said they heard a child crying for help. The prospect now that Zimmerman might never set foot in a courtroom for the shooting has caused widespread frustration and fury.
Just as sadly, Trayvonโs death was not unique. In 2008 and 2009, 2,582 Black children and teens were killed by gunfire. Black children and teens were only 15 percent of the child population, but 45 percent of the 5,740 child and teen gun deaths in those two years. Black males 15 to 19 years-old were eight times as likely as White males to be gun homicide victims. The outcry over Trayvonโs death is absolutely right and just. We need the same sense of outrage over every one of these child deaths. Above all, we need a nation where these senseless deaths no longer happen. But we wonโt get it until we have common-sense gun laws that protect children instead of guns and donโt allow people like George Zimmerman to take the law into their own hands. We wonโt get it until we have a culture that sees every child as a child of God and sacred, instead of seeing some as expendable statistics, and others as threats and โno goodโ because of the color of their skin or because they chose to walk home wearing a hood in the rain. And we wonโt get it until enough of usโparents and grandparentsโstand up and tell our political leaders that the National Rifle Association should not be in charge of our neighborhoods, streets, gun laws, and values. In Trayvonโs case, his father Tracy speaks for what his family needs: โThe family is calling for justice. We donโt want our sonโs death to be in vain.โ I hope that enough voices will ensure that it is not.
Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children's Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behindยฎ mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. For more information go towww.childrensdefense.org.
ZNetwork faqat o'z o'quvchilarining saxiyligi orqali moliyalashtiriladi.
hadya etmoq