Mark Greene wants us to understand that George Zimmerman is just one of many who view strangers as enemies, and hold dear the idea that different is dangerous.
Wednesday night a police video was released of George Zimmerman being taken into custody. Some folks say he does’t look like a man who has just been in a fight for his life. I, for one, can not speak to the events on the night which Trayvon Martin lost his life. I was not there. People with a lot more forensic and investigative skills will make clear to us what likely happened that night. But I can tell you this:
George Zimmerman is not alone.
There are a lot of people who believe the things he believes and who behave in the same way he did the night Trayvon Martin died.
There is a man I know very well. He is in his early 40’s. He has three amazing kids and a lovely wife. He’s a loving dad and a caring husband. They live in a community just outside of one of America’s hippest and most economically successful cities. One night at dinner, the doorbell rang. This man got up, in plain site of his family and guests, took a loaded pistol down from the top shelf of the dining area closet, put it in the back of his pants and answered the door. He had a short conversation and then closed the door, replaced the gun in the top of the closet, and returned to dinner.
I don’t know who was at the door. Maybe a guy selling subscriptions to the paper?
This man that I know views the world as a dangerous place. He sees strangers as threats he tracks, not as opportunities to connect. His relies heavily on being armed and he recommends it as the only way to create a sense of security for himself and his family. To my knowledge, he has had little or no association with non-whites. He grew up in a white community, among white people. Much of what he believes to be true about blacks, latinos and others, he learned from white people.
I believe that if he spent time with people of color, bridged the daunting social and political gaps between worlds, his opinions would change and his attitudes would soften. He would see them a decent people, with the same hopes and dreams for their kids as he has for his. But the opportunity has not presented itself. And he is not looking for that opportunity. And so, he speaks the narrative of guns and remaining vigilant to his friends and to his children. And he answers the door armed.
When I was young, they taught me in school that America was the melting pot of the world. But this man I know doesn’t see us that way. People like him see us as a nation under threat. They seek to protect themselves and their children in gated communities, withdrawing from the rich diversity of our global village into rigid social and political bubbles. Buying guns and honing their angry watchfulness for a threat they are sure is coming.
To me, this way of living is a recipe for disaster. It keeps people in a defensive posture, and it keeps them primed to act in aggressive ways against a population of strangers that they believe, somehow, has them under siege. George Zimmerman is not alone. He is part of a large population of Americans who reach for their guns first. And who are primed to resort to deadly force. Because they hold very dear the idea that different is dangerous.
Photo courtesy of iluvcocacola
The problem with “situational awareness” is it’s entirely about being threat focused. It presupposes that the world is going to attack you at some point. Staying focused on that one fact is the best way to be ready when an attack comes. The problem is, you filter out all non-threat signals and dramatically reduce their importance. Gestures of friendship, offers of communication, moments of connection. All these things are marginalized in deference to the primacy of tracking threat signals. Accordingly, no bridges are built. No connections made. It’s a bunker mentality. And it will get you attacked. Because you’re no… Read more »
Or you could ban guns to stop people hiding behind them. You know like e civilised world?
Like my dad’s bumper sticker said 40 years ago, “Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have gins” I don’t “hide” behind my gun. Check out the crime stats in areas where there is C&C. I’ve asked some of the kids I work with who have gun charges and they will admit that if they think I may have a gin on me, they pass me by.
All this hooplah about that moron in Florida but there are bigger problems. I heard just today from Juan Williams, that 90% of murder victims are African-Americans and 90% of those murders are committed by African-Americans. We keep focusing in these cases yet there is a much bigger problem.
Jesse Jackson himself says he’s relieved when the late-night footsteps on the street behind him belong to white rather than black feet, all bets are off.”
Let’s keep things in perspective
The image of a big white guy chasing down a terrified black child and mercilessly executing him out of sheer malice appears to so delicious to some people that they will never let go of it. The few people involved in this who 1. have access to the actual evidence 2. have a large personal stake in how correctly this case is handled are acting as if they have come to the conclusion that Zimmerman was more or less in the right and would have been killed killed or severely injured if he had not shot Martin when he did.… Read more »
It basically boils down to this. There are a lot of paranoid crazy people in America.
Am I wrong?
The evidence is compelling.
Note, it’s not all Americans, but there are a number of them. They seem to come out more and buy more guns to soothe their paranoia when half black, half white men are in the White House.
See here: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-03-24/markets/31232772_1_gun-rights-gun-shop-owners-obama-era
It’s exceedingly odd, but it is what it is.
You pretty definitely are a bigot. If people, people that you don’t know, are doing things you don’t approve of, why it has to be because they are racist, paranoid, ect., etc., etc.. Prejudge much?
“When I was young, they taught me in school that America was the melting pot of the world. But this man I know doesn’t see us that way. People like him see us as a nation under threat.”
This really gets to it, Mark, on a lot of levels. That bunker mentality is a natural and very destructive reaction and there is way too much of it going around. there are real challenges and that bunker mentlaity leaves us prey to all kinds of manipulation by demogogues,
Wait a minute, that guy who got his gun before he answered the door had no idea who was outside. Can we really say he was making a judgment about people who were ‘different’ than himself, or was he merely taking no chances? How do we know he is not equally suspicious of all people? How do we know he hasn’t had some experience which has caused him to be justifiably suspicious? And just because one lives near “one of America’s hippest cities” doesn’t mean one is immune to crime. The fact that this guy is white and happens to… Read more »
As a white male gun owner, I can assure you that ain’t what I’m saying.
Maybe that ain’t what you’re trying to say, but you still seemed to be able to divine that guy’s inner thought processes on very little evidence. Just because he has a different view of the world than you do, you evidently feel that you can accuse him of having bad motivations.
Yeah, a lot of people feel this way. But notice that your friend didn’t shoot whoever knocked on his door. He didn’t even threaten the man in your story. He just took a precaution – admitted, it was a strange one, but home invasions do happen.
Zimmerman didn’t just shoot some kid, he ran the kid down to do it. That goes a lot further than just expecting trouble. That man was looking for it.
The fear of strangers may be at the root of the Trayvon Martin crime, but it hardly explains the worst aspects of it. It is not just that Zimmerman was unreasonably fearful. It also has to do with the conduct of the police who appear to have protected him in this instance and tolerated him in the past and their failure to treat a crime (a self-defense law hardly covers someone who follows the person he shoots)like a crime and to investigate it like a crime. The problem with Zimmerman was racism. He almost certainly would not have handled an… Read more »
Zimmerman is hispanic, now white. You are trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
I believe that “fear of difference” caused this murder. Exactly the kind of “fear of difference” that you are promoting.
Unless you want a world filled with Zimmermans, build bridges, not walls. What you are doing today is building a wall. Why not try to understand the “gun nuts”, instead of marginalizing them? What are they afraid of? How do you contribute to that fear? What can be done to change it?
Excellent questions, Anthony.
For the record, the “person I know” is white. I’m not saying Zimmerman is…
But seriously, your questions are excellent.
“Hispanic” is a terribly-imprecise word, and it is not inconsistent at all to classify a person as both “Hispanic” and “white.” Wikipedia says that the term originated as a descriptor of an association with Hispania, i.e. Spain, a country with plenty of white, European faces. It has evolved to describe people from the Spanish-speaking Americas– Mexico, Central and South America. Even then, it’s problematic: I have two friends from South America. One has the hair, skin tone and a hint of the epicanthic fold which attests to the Japanese presence in Peru; the other is brown-haired with classic Teutonic features… Read more »
Doesn’t justify him killing a child and lying about it to protect himself
I think you misread the article–the author’s not justifying anything about what Zimmerman did. And I happen to agree with Mark’s appraisal of the situation. A court can sort this mess out and try to discover whether it was justified legally or not… because we’re a nation of laws.