On Trayvon Martin and Our Fear of Smiling Black Men

[onehandle]

When I look at pictures of Trayvon Martin, I see a boy who smiled when the camera was on him. If I had to write a story about Trayvon using those pictures alone, I would describe him as a happy child who didn’t need to be feared by anyone.

snip...

When I was a child, I played one year of Pop Warner football for the Seaside Raiders. On the day we took our team picture, our black coach told our majority black team NOT to smile. A couple of my teammates looked at me and said, “Jozen, you better listen to coach.”

This had everything to do with the culture of our city and our team. We were the Seaside Raiders. We wore black and silver jerseys. Seaside was the black city in the county. Football is a sport driven by fear and going face to face against that fear. The entire point of not smiling in the team photo was less about looking like we weren’t afraid, and more about putting fear into others. When we would do tackle drills, anytime a player looked shook, the coach would make them go against a much bigger player. “We’re going to get that fear out of you,” the coach would say. In his eyes, the way you dealt with fear is you attacked it. Zimmerman had the same philosophy.

George Zimmerman wasn’t a racist because he hated Trayvon Martin, he was a racist for fearing Trayvon Martin simply because he was black. In the coming days, weeks, and months, people will talk a lot about trying to erase the hate, but I want to try and figure out a way to erase the fear of others who don’t look like us, talk like us, or socialize with us.

http://gawker.com/on-trayvon-martin-and-our-fear-of-smiling-black-men-836263588

[Hoyt]

1. And, at least one juror -- B37 -- feared and convicted Trayvon for being black, as well.

Good post.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. This is perfect:

George Zimmerman wasn’t a racist because he hated Trayvon Martin, he was a racist for fearing Trayvon Martin simply because he was black.

Nailed it in one.