In a wide-ranging interview about his new book, Rebuild the Dream, which is being released Wednesday on the 44th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Amy Goodman at Democracy Now started off by asking Van Jones about the Trayvon Martin shooting:
AMY GOODMAN: Your comments on the killing of the 17-year-old African-American teenager who had Skittles and Arizona iced tea with him in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, and was killed by a neighborhood so-called watchman, George Zimmerman, who has yet to be arrested?
VAN JONES: Well, you know, this kind of hits close to home for me. I’m an African-American father. I’ve got two little black boys. And, you know, I think, for myself, how am I going to protect these young guys? I mean, do you have to dress your kid in a tuxedo now to send them down the street? They said, "Well, the guy had on a hoodie." I’ve seen white people jogging in hoodies my whole life. It was raining. I think it just—I don’t know how you get a capital offense out of wearing a hoodie. So now, I think for a lot of African-American parents, how do you protect your kids? This kid was not involved in gang activity. He was not armed. He was not doing anything that any other kid doesn’t do. And yet, somehow, he gets targeted.
The one thing you expect when something like that happens to your child, your unarmed child is killed by a stranger, is that the police will be on your side. And here, not only do you have your expectation that your kid, who’s not in trouble, can get to the store and come back safely, but then even the police won’t be on your side. It feels like the privatization of the kind of racial violence that we often associated with some of our worst police departments. Now, private citizens are doing this sort of thing with apparent police approval.
Now there is the need for more facts, but often what would happen, if the situation was reversed—can you imagine a black kid says, "Look, I was walking around my neighborhood, trying to protect it with a gun. I saw a white guy. I don’t think he belonged here, so I shot him"? The kid would at least get arrested. I mean, that—you know, you would at least have the beginnings of the criminal process. Now, certainly, you get a chance to get before a jury of your peers. I think people are outraged because it seems like this is another step down the road of saying black male life, young black male life, is not valued in our society.
AMY GOODMAN: You tweeted about Trayvon Martin, and you wrote, at the time, after George Zimmerman killed him, when he was clearly unarmed. Your tweet was, if you remember, you said, "I'd just dropped kids off & returned to car. Realized I was wearing a dark hoodie. Felt pang of fear. All of us are vulnerable. RIP #trayvon."
VAN JONES: Yeah, and that wasn’t for a tweet. I literally—I was coming back to my car, and I saw my reflection in the glass of my own car, and I realized, here I am, a black guy with a hoodie. And if it’s open season, according to the police, if that’s a good enough excuse—well, the guy had a hoodie, that’s why he got shot—then that we’re all vulnerable.
Like many other Americans, African Americans have been shocked by the Trayvon Martin shooting. But few of them have been surprised. They know all too well the impact of institutional racism that can allow the killing of a black boy not to produce the kind of responses from police and prosecutors that the pursuit and shooting of a white boy would have done. African Americans aren't the only ones who have responded with empathy and anger to what happened in Sanford, Florida. Indeed, much of the response across the country—if you blot out hate-radio and Foxaganda—has been heartening. That someone can kill a black boy with impunity has elicited a visceral reaction.
But for some people, this is more than just awful news. It's deeply personal. Van Jones knows that what happened to Trayvon could someday happen to one of his sons. He can only do so much to protect them. Without profound changes, they'll always be at risk.
Which is why, despite the desires of some Americans to stop the inevitably uncomfortable discussions that have been engendered by the shooting, progressives should work to make sure they continue. Van Jones's sons deserve to live in a world where they aren't racially profiled, where the police and prosecutors can be counted on to be on their side, where they won't be considered "suspicious" for wearing a hoodie against the rain while talking to their girlfriend on the phone no matter what community they happen to be in.