We're really swimming in it now.

[bigtree]

71. and that's where race comes in

. . . doesn't it?

To presume that there was justification for what Zimmerman did, there has to be an assumption that there was something equally pernicious that Trayvon was doing. That's where these assumptions come in which are based on stereotypes about black youth that African Americans have been subject to for decades. The significance of that is the long history of police overreaction and abuses toward members of the black community which has been presumed to be based on these same negative stereotypes of black males.

Zimmerman was certainly an 'aggressive gunman, but the fact that he was acting in a self-appointed role as an arbiter of order in his neighborhood has draw others to identify his actions with their own determination that it's just fine and proper to make these stereotypical judgments in defense against the perceived danger from these figures; these images; these black youth that they readily associate with crime and violence.

To accept that it is understandable to assume this black youth was the aggressor in this incident is a precursor to a defense of Zimmerman. It's just too familiar to many of us to disassociate this incident from the racial preconceptions which have plagued the African-American community for decades.