A question of appearances

Have you ever gone to visit someone in a town you didn’t know well, and felt threatened as you walked down the street? If you are not a young, black male, then the answer to that question is probably no. If you are a young, black male, however, then what happened to Trayvon Martin could happen to you, and you have probably grown up living with that fear.For Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old black kid who was shot to death by a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26, while visiting family, being a stranger in that neighborhood had a tragic outcome. He went out to take a walk to the local convenience store and wound up dead. The police in Sanford have declined to arrest the gunman in the Martin case, up to this point, because he claims he shot Trayvon in self-defense. Well, from my perch here in New England, I’m not going to pretend that I know the facts of the case, but let’s back up a few steps. It’s been reported that George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain, called 911 to report a suspicious person walking in his neighborhood. The dispatcher told him not to pursue the person, an order he ignored. Anything from this point forward places a heavy burden on Zimmerman to explain his actions so they reflect self-defense, since he was disregarding both the police order of the moment and also the basic mission of neighborhood watches, which is report, but don’t engage.Now we have this scenario: A young black teen is walking down the street in a strange neighborhood. He’s being followed by someone in a car. He’s uneasy. He feels threatened but he’s not on familiar ground, there is no friendly neighbor’s house that he can duck into to avoid this threat. The car stops, the driver gets out. He’s armed; the young black boy doesn’t know why he’s being followed or accosted. Words are exchanged, and he fights back. But he’s unarmed and he ends up dead.It’s called walking while black. Back in the 1990s, the New Jersey State Police came under investigation for routinely stopping young black men in cars. The police called it racial profiling, the black community called it driving while black.For certain races or ethnicities in the United States, it doesn’t seem to matter what you’re doing, you can get in trouble simply for looking a certain way. What it has come to mean for millions of black Americans is that they practically need a passport to travel outside their own neighborhoods or communities. And in some cases even in their homes: Remember the incident in July of 2009 with Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor who was arrested at his home after an altercation with the Boston police? According to reports, the police arrived on the scene to investigate a reported break-in. Gates had just returned from a trip overseas and was having trouble getting his key to work in the lock. He wasn’t arrested for breaking into his house, but for his belligerence with the police for presuming his guilt. Can we blame him?Apparently, being young, male and black was enough to make Trayvon suspicious to Zimmerman. His actions indicate that he believed Trayvon had no business being in his neighborhood. While the philosophy behind neighborhood watch groups is, basically, if we don’t know you, then you are suspicious, Zimmerman took it a step further. Zimmerman never said that Trayvon was doing something suspicious, simply that he was suspicious, that he looked suspicious. All of Zimmerman’s actions were the ones in this incident, according to the reports, that were actually threatening, whereas Trayvon’s action of walking down the street was only perceived by Zimmerman to be threatening.Unfortunately, in America today, looks may not kill – but they can get you killed. Tara Kelly, copy editor at The Lake­ville Journal, is an avid follower of social trends. She may be reached by email at tarakny@earthlink.net.