It's a ****ed up case from what I know of it. Zimmerman clearly initiated the confrontation and ended up shooting a kid dead.
It's easy for him to formulate reasons why in hindsight, anyone can come up with excuses for confronting anyone else if they want to - 'looked threatening', 'acting strange' etc, but to me it seems like a guy playing toy soldier and seeking out conflict with another guy because of his own subjective fears that the guy might be up to something.
The race factor is clearly a big part of it, as a lot of people obviously feel that GZ identifying a black kid as a threat that needed to be confronted was reasonable. A lot of other people don't automatically see black kids that way.
The question you need to ask is whether young men of a certain race or ethnicity or whatever should have to live their lives having men pursue and confront them as they go about their daily lives, because of preconceptions other men may have about their racial or ethnic group?
In other words, if I'm a black kid walking home from the shop, is it reasonable for me to have men get out of their cars, chase me, and demand to know what I'm doing, just because I'm black and other black kids have been known to commit crimes? That seems to me to not be a very healthy basis for society to operate on.
It's easy for him to formulate reasons why in hindsight, anyone can come up with excuses for confronting anyone else if they want to - 'looked threatening', 'acting strange' etc, but to me it seems like a guy playing toy soldier and seeking out conflict with another guy because of his own subjective fears that the guy might be up to something.
The race factor is clearly a big part of it, as a lot of people obviously feel that GZ identifying a black kid as a threat that needed to be confronted was reasonable. A lot of other people don't automatically see black kids that way.
The question you need to ask is whether young men of a certain race or ethnicity or whatever should have to live their lives having men pursue and confront them as they go about their daily lives, because of preconceptions other men may have about their racial or ethnic group?
In other words, if I'm a black kid walking home from the shop, is it reasonable for me to have men get out of their cars, chase me, and demand to know what I'm doing, just because I'm black and other black kids have been known to commit crimes? That seems to me to not be a very healthy basis for society to operate on.
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