A tale of two hoodies (wow)

[XemaSab]

6. There's some devil's advocacy on my part, I'll admit that

I'm surprised by how many people on DU refuse to see the major players involved as complex individuals with their own narratives and their own agency in the situation.

I get wanting to turn everyone involved into a symbol, but IMHO it creates a trope that's just as racist as what the right wingers are pushing.

Not every altercation between a white person (or an honorary white person) and a black person is like the Emmett Till or Reginald Denny cases.

Trayvon was minding his own business when Zimmerman got up in his scene, and it's horrible that he wound up dead.

IMHO each one of them had other options, but they both resorted to violence, and the dude who didn't have a gun was killed by the dude who did have the gun.

Portraying a 17-yo who was almost 6 feet tall, a football player, a fast runner, and a boxer as a little doe-eyed 8-yo is not respecting him as man and a person, it's just turning him into a victim and a symbol. It's as dehumanizing as putting Zimmerman in a hood.

Even the narrative of Trayvon's supposed purity and innocence is racist, IMHO. "He was going to go to college!" reads to me as "He was one of the good ones!" If Trayvon had been caught coming out of someone's house with a TV in one hand and a sack of jewelry in the other hand, would Zimmerman have been right in shooting him? Absolutely not!

Hell, my high school was full of white kids who stole stuff, drank, did drugs, and acted like jerks. Trayvon was an ordinary kid. I'm still on "his" side in the altercation, and recognizing some nuance there isn't a problem for me.

Trayvon's life had value, and respecting and honoring his complexity as a human being doesn't make what happened any less tragic.