Speaking of Racism: Explaining Trayvon

In late February of 2012, George Zimmerman, a white Latino man, shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, in a gated community in Florida. In April 2012, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder. And in the middle of July 2013, a jury ruled Zimmerman not guilty and set him free. Anything I say beyond this will necessarily be biased.

From everything we can tell, Trayvon Martin went out to buy a snack, and as he was coming home, he passed a man in a car, George Zimmerman, who thought that he was up to no good. Zimmerman, a volunteer in the neighborhood watch, called the police, who told him not to follow Martin. Martin noticed Zimmerman watching him and started to run back towards the house where he was staying. Zimmerman, still somehow feeling threatened by the passing teenager, got out of his car, chased Martin down, and they fought. In an act that Zimmerman would eventually (and successfully) term self-defense, Zimmerman took out his gun and fatally shot Martin. Can you judge for yourself? Guilty, or not guilty?

Partly because of the racial element, this became one of the most closely followed cases in recent memory. As such highly influential black men as columnist Charles Blow of the New York Times, United States Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Barack Obama have mentioned, Trayvon Martin could have been their sons. The not guilty verdict in this case, to them, underscored the importance of the talk that any father has to have with his black son - we have a justice system, but it may not protect you.

The Florida law that gave the jurors reason to acquit George Zimmerman is called Stand Your Ground, which gives people the right to use force to defend themselves without requiring them first to attempt to evade the danger. In essence, it protects an aggressor who starts a fight and then ends up killing his combatant in self-defense. Zimmerman also had a permit to carry a gun, so the prosecutors could not use that to advance their case.

Between those two elements, the jury could not see beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman had committed second-degree murder (unplanned murder) or even the lesser charge of manslaughter (unintentional killing), which also would have come with a prison term. The law allowed him to have been acting in self-defense in a fight that he started, so now he's freely living his life, and Trayvon Martin is dead.

The laws themselves are of course questionable, but the problem that the case brings up is deeper. Although Zimmerman or any other would never admit it, the obvious and likely true conclusion is that had Trayvon Martin had a different skin color, George Zimmerman never would have been suspicious in the first place. Martin would have come back from the convenience store and enjoyed his Skittles and iced tea in his father's fiancée’s house, he would have gone to school the next day, he would have celebrated his 18th birthday the next year, he might have gone to college, he might have succeeded in whichever calling he chose.

Thousands of people, black and otherwise, have shown their support to Martin's family by dressing up in sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt, the same outfit that Martin was wearing when Zimmerman decided that he was a threat. We haven't seen Barack in a hoodie yet, but we have seen Ludacris, a group of medical students at the historically black Howard University, and the entire Miami Heat NBA team. What would the case have looked like if Zimmerman had killed Lebron James, the Miami Heat’s star and one of the greatest basketball players to ever live?

Martin wasn't a medical student, and he wasn't famous. But along with support, the pictures of prominent black men in hoodies are expressing something else, something that none of us can comprehend unless we are black men born in the US – fear, fear that Trayvon could have been you, or your brother, or your son. There is no reason why my fellow American citizens should live with that fear while my brother and I don't. We need to fix the laws, but first we need to fix the problem in society, and that makes passing a law in Congress look easy.

I'm sitting in a train station in Budapest writing this, and a couple of policemen just stopped a black man and had him take out an ID card. They're smiling and there is no tension apparent in the situation, but the fact remains that they haven't stopped me. I suppose I can't escape it just by leaving America.