Would You Have Shot Trayvon???

                           
If you were walking around your quiet suburban neighborhood and you saw someone walking up the street who was obviously not white, and wearing a hoody with the hood up, how would you react? No seriously, how would you react?  Most of us would use the "I'm not racist or prejudice" defense immediately but be honest. A minority walking around in clothes like that is much more intimidating than a white person wearing the exact same thing. 
That is because you have been conditioned to believe that black people (in this case) who dress like that have a higher propensity to be dangerous or violent.  Watch cops, watch gangster movies, watch tv, even BET shows black people in that same light.  Its not your fault necessarily, unless you consciously believe so.  But in most of us it is such a conditioned response, it is all that we know.  When you see a lone white male in a park late at night and he looks suspicious you think to yourself "serial killer, or rapist" but a minority/black male and you think "gangster, drug dealer"  and you are unable to contain your fear.  You think that he will steal your purse, mug you and beat you half to death. When in reality I am just walking home. 
Now think of the case of George Zimmerman, a man who himself is half minority, whose neighborhood has been victim of break ins by what happened to be reported as black males.  So he naturally thinks that this young black male is one of those criminals.  Couple this situation with the built up racism and hatred that Zimmerman had come to have from ,at the least the recent break ins, and who knows what else happened in his life.  Would you have felt threatened? Would you have pulled a gun out and pulled the trigger?

I want to make it clear that I am in no way taking up for George Zimmerman, or in anyway defending his actions. I just want to put you in his mind. We often look at these things from the outside and say to ourselves "how could someone do that" and we feel so holy about ourselves.  When in reality, we also may have felt threatened.  Threatened enough to ask him what he was doing?, probably not. And definitely not threatened  enough to pull the trigger on an unarmed teenager.  Just realize the stigma that society and you place on certain groups and people and how these stigma play a role in how people make decisions.  Whether these stigma are correct or not.