Blog 4: Racism

Summary

On February 26th, 2012, an African-American teenager was fatally shot by a man of mexican and white decent. The man had claimed that the teenager looked and seemed suspicious. After buying a bag of skittles and a juice from a store, the teen was walking home and was seen by the man and the man decided to call a non-emergency hotline to report the suspicious teen. The police stated to not follow the teen however he did anyway and thats when gun shots were heard however no one saw the incident or any altercations. The man claims it was self-defense and was released, police didn’t even arrest the man. Later on, the man was charged 2nd-degree murder but after trial the jury saw the man to not be guilty. This case got a lot of attention throughout the world. The world believed that the man profiled the teen to be threatening and suspicious just because the teen was african-american. Protests and rallies took place nationwide all because of this one teen who was shot and all he had on him was a skittles bag and some juice. Plenty of people showed up for the Million Hoodie March to try and demand justice for the teen.

Reflection

In my point of view, this situation has to do with race. This man saw an African-American teen with a hoodie on an assumed the worse. According to the book, a stereotype is defined as “oversimplified ideas about groups of people” (OpenStax, 2017 p244). Basically, its as if you took an umbrella and put a whole race of people under that umbrella and created an idea about all the people under that umbrella. As if an individual person of that race is exactly like every single person under that umbrella. However, that is not the case. I believe the man stereotyped this teenager and assumed he was threatening because of the color of his skin. The book even talks about this case stating how there were claims about racial profiling involving this case. Racial profiling is law enforcement assuming someone did or didn’t do the crime based off of their race (OpenStax, 2017). The man was apart of the community’s neighborhood watch program, saw a black teen and saw him as threatening and suspicious and then follows the teen and ends up killing him. I see this as him racially profiling the teenager and assuming he was up to no good based off his race. It was not fair, I do feel like racism had ran its course with this one.

Word Count: 426

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/florida-teen-trayvon-martin-is-shot-and-killed