Geraldo Rivera
says:
“I am urging the parents of black and Latino youngsters particularly to not let their children go out wearing hoodies,” Rivera said on “Fox & Friends.” “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”
No mention from Geraldo about the fact that Zimmerman was also wearing a hoodie?
In an NPR essay, the Center for Inspired Teaching‘s Cosby Hunt said the media coverage of Martin wearing a hooded sweatshirt reminds him of his own children and the conversations he and his wife will need to have with them. His 3-year-old son Ellington wears a Batman hoodie with ears as often as he can, and sometimes sleeps with it on. His older son Freeman also wears hooded sweatshirts.
“We did not plan to give them advice about hoodies, but now I see we’ll need to have that talk, too,” Hunt writes. “We will have [to] say, ‘You know how you used to wear your hooded Batman sweatshirt when you wanted to fight the bad guys as a kid? Well, now that you’re older, some people will be confused and think that you are the bad guys if they see your hoodie and your skin color. It’s silly and wrong that anyone would think that you are the bad guys, but we don’t want you to be hurt. We don’t want the real bad guys or even some guy playing superhero to hurt you.’”
Why is it that white kids who wear hoodies as much as anyone aren't being admonished in this regard? How about we tell everybody to stop making assumptions based on attire?