‘I Am Trayvon’

April 1, 2012

‘I Am Trayvon’

Slogan Reflects Worry for Kids in Community

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

 iamtrayvon

Eight-year-old Tyvrell Cribb symbolizes solidarity with Trayvon Martin as he takes part in a Richmond, Va. rally on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. The rally was held to show sympathy for the family of the slain Florida teen and demonstrate outrage at the failure of police to arrest his killer. PHOTO: Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Nationally, signs carry the slogan “I am Trayvon Martin” at rallies, including those in the Richmond area. It’s a slogan that also resounds in church pulpits and untold conversations.

And across the country, children and grown men, including state legislators and congressmen, also are donning hooded sweatshirts — a “hoodie” — as a show

of solidarity with the unarmed Florida teen who was gunned down after being deemed “suspicious” for wearing a hoodie by his killer, a self-appointed Neighborhood Watch captain.

That’s why the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta — the church that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once pastored — wore a hoodie last Sunday. “We’re standing as a church of nonviolence to say that a hoodie is not a weapon,” the pastor, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, preached.

The uproar over Trayvon’s slaying in Sanford, Fla., continues to explode in the public consciousness a month later.

His death has clearly touched a raw nerve — exposing the unspoken fears so many black parents have for the survival of their children who enter a world where they

face suspicion just for being young and black. President Obama summed up that underlying worry with his comment last Thursday: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

Mothers and fathers see themselves and their children in the anguished faces of Trayvon’s parents who cannot believe their son was killed for simply walking back to his father’s home with iced tea and a bag of Skittles. No one wants to be like Trayvon’s parents in having to bury their child.

That’s why so many now are talking about the survival instructions that are commonplace in black households where parents talk to their children, particularly their sons, about how to act around police and others. And for good reason. A U.S. Justice Department study found that young Black males are three to four more times likely to have police threaten them or to use force against them compared to their White counterparts.

One example is the instruction to boys to keep their hands out of their pockets because people might perceive that as threatening or think they’ve stolen something. Or in a store, to always have their items bagged and to take

a receipt to avoid any issues.

And if police are involved, sons are told not to reach for anything and to be respectful to avoid trouble or being killed.