What are the Lessons for Parents and Children in Light of the George Zimmerman Acquittal?

 

 

Much of America is shocked and outraged at the not guilty verdict for George Zimmeran for killing young Trayvon Martin. What lessons can be learned from this verdict? What can parents, particularly parents of black children, teach them?

It is true that black Americans are freer now, considering the years of subjugation and discrimination. However, the Zimmerman acquittal in the death of a black teenager walking home with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea shows that America has a long way to go in the battle against racism. Despite the end of Jim Crow, it would seem that it is still socially, politically and legally acceptable to presume the guilt of nonwhite bodies. It would seem that Trayvon Martin was the one on trial rather than George Zimmerman.

W. E. B. Du Bois stated in The Souls of Black Folk, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others. . . . One feels his two-ness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

What are the lessons of this verdict for non-white children? We learn that it seems that black children may be destined to live their lives feeling the sense of two-ness and having to look at themselves through the eyes of others, as Du Bois eloquently referenced.We learn that black parents should understand that many white people view their children, whether they are honor students, volunteers, or athletes, as potentially menacing, and that all their activities - driving a car, shopping in a store, or even taking an evening stroll to the corner store for Skittles -should be viewed the same way as those white people with the guns. In other words, it seems that non white children should assume that white people will view them as inherently threatening and suspect. The Zimmerman verdict teaches that white people apparently can approach, incite, and initiate conflict with a black child, and that black child should not respond defensively in any form, because the white man with the gun has the right to stand his ground.

W.E.B. Dubois, have you just rolled over in your grave?