I find this entire situation very depressing. I have had many thoughts about this case, many of which I usually wouldn't discuss here but, I really feel like discussing this. It involves kids in my 7th period trigonometry class and the teacher. The students are black and the teacher is white. My teacher is a conservative just in case any of you are left wondering. Please starte reading below the golden emblem now.
It was for half the period a normal class when, halfway through, My teacher related the lesson to the Trayvon Martin case. Some students behind me made a fuss having hoped that they had heard the end of this case the teacher stated that they were not going to stop hearing about this at least until the end of the trial and one of my classmates replied that they don't like that the only reason this case is getting so much attention is because Trayvon was black and Zimmerman is white. They said that, and I have to agree with them on this, that if he had been black this wouldn't have even been on the news, and if he had been white and Zimmerman was black, Zimmerman would probably already been in prison on deathrow ( I don't agree with the deathrow part). My teacher states that he doesn't like how this murder is being treated. He would rather it not be made so serious on account of race or that all other murders be treated as seriously as this one. Either way, the fact that someone is dead is all that matters to him.
We stopped talking about this and got back to work but once the bell rang, I asked my teacher when did he think this entire subject would blow over. He replied probably six months and then (I think he was half joking half serious with this comment) the movie will be out in at least a year. One of the students whom had objected to the subject being brought up in the first place went into deeper detail about why he dislikes how things are being handled and how he feels that if Zimmerman is found innocent he hopes there will not be riots because if there are he is going to laugh at all of the people who got arrested for making this a bigger than it should have been. My teacher then goes on to explain how he sees everything.
There are some situations were you don't know everything involved but, you do know the outcome (that was the lesson he was originally relating to the case), this is one of those times. You he isn't sure of whether or not Zimmerman was racists but he feels that he should have turned back after the dispatcher said he did not need to follow Trayvon. After he ignored that he doesn't get to make the self-defense case. Think of it as four points: points A,B,C, and D. Point A is where Zimmerman is safer from wrong being in the wrong and point D he should be in jail right now. My teacher feels Zimmerman crossed passed point A after ignoring the dispacther and following Trayvon and kept moving through points B, C, etc but, may have started moving back to point B at some point, either way, he wasn't at point A the point of blamelessness. My teacher feels that anything that happened including the struggle Zimmerman may have had with Trayvon up until the shooting is is fault. He lost blamelessness when he followed Trayvon and that he will find this out in court. My teacher would like to see a jury of hispanics, whites, and blacks to judge Zimmerman (he wants the jury to reflect the demographics of Florida) and that he will be fine with any decision so long as all of the jurers of all different backgrounds can come together and make a definitive decision either way.
As we were all leaving the classroom, my classmate makes the his final point that he hates how some people are like "If that were my son he'd already be dead" because, no one really knows how they react and my teacher simply replies that he would hope that they would be a big enough person to not kill him and if not at least big enough to go to prison without a fuss. As we end our discussion a tell the classmate that one thing that really bothers me is the fact that some people feel the need to label Trayvon as a thug or drug dealer or whatever. If Zimmerman can't be assumed to be guilty neither should Trayvon. It's a two way streak. My classmate agrees and we go our seperate ways saying we will see each other tomorrow. And I have to say talking to them and then writing about it here has made me feel much better.