This is not telecom. But for the reasons I explain below, I have been struggling for days with the twin tragedies of the killing of Trayvon Martin and the killing of three Jewish children, a Rabbi, and three French soldiers in Toulouse. For me, they are inextricably linked.
Both the tragedy of Toulouse and the tragedy of Trayvon Martin flow from the fact that bias blinds us to the individual before us. Merah saw his victims not as French children who were Jewish at school but as generic “Jews” to be held accountable for what other generic “Jews” had done in some other part of the world, and thus teach all generic “Jews” a lesson. Because for Merah, Jews were not actual individual people but some collective group utterly unlike him and the narrow circle of like-minded people he decided were actual people. It did not matter that they shared many commonalities with him. It did not matter that they were French, they lived in Toulouse, and shared the same everyday culture. In Merah’s eyes, they were Jews and therefore belonging to some other, foreign tribe, not quite human and to be held collectively accountable for the actions of other generic Jews they had never even met.
Merah made the same calculation for the 3 French soldiers of African descent he murdered. He could have seen them as fellow Frenchmen, or even as fellow Africans. But he saw them as generic symbols of a Western military with whom he considered himself at war.
Where is the link to George Zimmerman half a world a way? Like Merah, he did not see a person in front of him. He saw a generic “young black man in a hoodie.” The same power of bias that transformed children at play in a French school into generic Jews responsible for the actions of any other generic Jew anywhere transformed a harmless young man walking home from the 7-11 into a generic caricature — a suspicious creature imbued with all the negative stereotypes of our popular culture. No doubt Zimmerman genuinely believed he was ferreting out a suspicious character, and no doubt genuinely felt in fear of his life. It is not the sincerity of Zimmerman’s belief that it is at issue. To the contrary, it is precisely their strength and sincerity that should so deeply trouble us. Would the same actions have seemed so suspicious and threatening to the self-appointed captain of the neighborhood watch had it not so neatly fit the little cubbyhole our culture has created for the “black teenage thug in hoodie?”
Trayvon Martin was unarmed, yet he was shot in the chest. What possible circumstances could inspire Zimmerman to believe that he needed to use deadly force in such a case? The fact that Zimmerman did not see himself as confronting a young man going about his business, but a generic “black teenage thug in a hoodie,” a wild and dangerous beast against whom only lethal force can hope to win the day. Zimmerman, like Merah, could have seen a young man similar to himself in many ways, a real person whose life had barely begun. Instead he saw an alien threat, a generic “black teenage thug in hoodie” whose every movement — no matter how benign in another — therefore screamed menace to Zimmerman.
Mr. Zimmerman’s father has written a letter defending his son as having black friends and not being a racist. I expect this is so. These are people Mr. Zimmerman has met, he knows them as people. Had he seen one of them walking back from the 7-11 in a hoodie, he would have recognized a friend and waved. But in the absence of such evidence, Trayvon Martin defaulted from “teenager walking home” to “black thug in hoodie.”
I will confess I am as guilty empathizing more with people as obviously like me, as the Jews of Toulouse. But it is equally true for Trayvon Martin because I have a teenage son. When I hear people chanting “Trayvon Martin is my son,” I feel it more than I would have 15 years ago because I have a teenage boy. When I kiss Aaron goodbye in the morning, I keep wondering if some madman will see him not as my beautiful, loving, smart, goodhearted wonderful treasure with a whole life ahead of him but as a generic “Jew” to be killed. When I see Trayvon’s father struggling with his tears and the loss of his beautiful son, it tears my heart because I know how devastating it would be for me to hear that Aaron was shot by someone in “revenge” for events he never committed. As Eva Sandler, whose husband and two of her children were shot down by Merah, wrote in an open letter “Parents, please kiss your children. Tell them how much you love them, and how dear it is to your heart that they be living examples of our Torah, imbued with the fear of Heaven and with love of their fellow man.”
Trayvon Martin is my son. He is all our sons. The victims of Toulouse were our sons and daughters. They were all victims of the same bias that allows someone to see not a unique human being but a generic dehumanized stereotype. Let us therefore open our hearts to the sentiment expressed most famously and eloquently by John Donne four centuries ago, and modify his famous concluding lines just slightly. “Therefore, send not to know for whose son the Bell tolls. It tolls for yours.”
“Trayvon Martin was unarmed, yet he was shot in the chest. What possible circumstances could inspire Zimmerman to believe that he needed to use deadly force in such a case? The fact that Zimmerman did not see himself as confronting a young man going about his business, but a generic “black teenage thug in a hoodie,” a wild and dangerous beast against whom only lethal force can hope to win the day. ”
Be careful Harold. You are making a class based statement without all the facts.
1/ It appears now that Martin may have been the attacker and NOT the victim.
2/ There was no class based generic threat of “youth in hoodie.” but a very specific threat of Martin assaulting Zimmerman. A witness has confirmed this, beginning to end.
3/ There is evidence of a struggle before the shooting occurred when Zimmerman was interviewed by the dept.
http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/dpp/news/state/witness-martin-attacked-zimmerman-03232012
If you are being assaulted, getting the losing end of it, how do you react? This was not some Southern-Sheriff-Hey-Boy-shoots-defenseless-child encounter.
Harold,
Sad cases all around. Your fundamental point is correct and both obvious & not obvious. I recently read an interesting article in, I think, Harvard Business Review, called something like “Why Diversity Training Doesn’t Work” — a point that it backed up with legitimate empirical evidence. Diversity training doesn’t work because it teaches people to think of other people as members of other groups, and thus either reinforces or introduces stereotyping and tribal thinking. What DOES work is communication training, teaching people how to relate to other people as individuals and to recognize and avoid thinking in terms of stereotypes instead of individuals.
I’m tempted to delete the ignorant comment above by John Mc, but think I’ll leave it as a testament to what kind of world we live in.
John,
You are more than welcome to delete the comment. Won’t hurt me one bit. But it won’t erase the facts either.
“Perhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.”
― Christopher Hitchens
“I’m tempted to delete the ignorant comment above by John Mc, but think I’ll leave it as a testament to what kind of world we live in.”
What do you mean, the world we live in? Is this a world in which we do not jump to conclusions and convict people in the court of public opinion/speculation? Can you elaborate on what is so ignorant on John MC’s comment? I see the same argument made elsewhere, but I’ve yet to see a clear explanation why not to question whether Zimmerman did act in self-defense.
I’ll assume yours is a serious question, Webb. When one brings a gun to a fistfight and the other guy dies, there is a name for that, and the name is “murder”. There is very little Martin could have done (and nothing he is alleged to have done) to cancel out the fact that he was lighter, younger, less experienced, possessed of a shorter rap sheet, and NOT CARRYING A GUN.
You’ll hear some weasels complain that the case shouldn’t be tried in the media. The fact is that for a month after the shooting, no one outside Sanford took any notice. I mean, it’s not like a pretty virginal white girl had been shot. But after a month of no police investigation and no prosecutorial action, legitimate questions can be raised of whether police in Sanford would ever have responded with anything more than, “sucks to be that kid!” All of the hoopla and race-focused rhetoric you’ve heard since then is a reaction at least as much to the fact that police and prosecutors refused to act, or at least performed a winning impression of a refusal to act, as to the actual shooting.
“For charges to be brought the prosecutor would have to produce probable cause and according to the source, “There just isn’t any at this time”. Three eye witnesses completely backup George Zimmerman’s account of being attacked first by Trayvon Martin and his claim of being in fear of his life he shot Martin in self defense.
“Nothing produced so far has degraded that claim” the source said.”
Source — http://macsmind.com/wordpress/2012/04/source-george-zimmerman-not-likely-to-be-arrested/
The point of my original comment was that all is not what is being portrayed in the public mind. Martin was not the kid in the photo of 12yo. He was 17, toned, a man. Zimmerman had 20 pounds on the kid sure, most of it fat, and needed to be in a gym. Three witnesses have collaborated Zimmeran’s account, that Martin initiated an assault on him. That means right to defend was in play.
I would ask Jess, do you condone assault on another person?
I hope you never carry a firearm in public, JohnMc, if you feel that a few kicks and punches from a 150 lb. high schooler against a decade-older, much heavier man with a longer criminal record who is documented as having been in numerous fights as an adult, some of those with police, and who by the way actually started the altercation, is enough of a threat to justify the use of lethal force.
Because it isn’t.
Do you condone murder “on another person”?
First of all Jess, you ducked my original question — Do you condone assault? Its a binary question. Either yes or no please.
I presume by your “if you feel that a few kicks and punches from a 150 lb….” its probably a yes but I will withhold judgment till you give a definitive answer.
“Do you condone murder “on another person”?” First of all for the technical definition of murder, no I do not. But that is not the case vis a vis Zimmerman-Martin. Guess you did not read the last part of the previous post where the authorities will not be pressing charges based on all the evidence pointing to self defense.