Blame the Victim, Blame the Hoodie? Excuse the Killer? Arm the fuddy duddy fashion police?

I'm wearing a hoodie today. 
Not because of solidarity with Trayvon Martin particularly; I'm wearing a hoodie for the same reason that Trayvon Martin wore a hoodie on the night he was shot to death. 
It's chilly and it's raining outside. 
I'm not "identifying with gangsta's", and I don't have my sweat pants hanging down low either (I mentioned, it's cold - not that I would anyway.)  I'm also not male, I'm not a teen, and I'm not black.
There is absolutely NO indication that Trayvon Martin in wearing a hoodie was emulating a gangster; there is no indication that he was wearing his pants what is sometimes called skater style, a style that stereotypically could as accurately be called plumber style.
Juan Williams was wrong about Muslims and their ethnic clothing.  The Fox Nuts village idiot, Geraldo Rivera, is wrong about his assumptions based on clothing and stereotypes.  That such messages that clothing can get you shot, or running can get you shot, or standing too close to someone else can get you shot is a terrible thing for any person of color to learn for survival.  The CORRECT response is that such stereotypes are WRONG, not the response that we must conform to them.
It is no different than the message about women and clothing given by Hilary Clinton recently, that I wrote about here.  Like the message that it is wrong for Iraqi conservatives in that country to react fearfully to teens wearing Emo style clothing in a youthful rebellion by stoning them to death, it is as equally backward, intolerant and reactionary to assert that there is any manner of dress - Emo, Goth, or Hoodie, or ethnic or something other - and equally it is wrong to justify a violent reaction or otherwise to hold a significantly negative prejudgement about people, much less act on one destructively.
I learned an important lesson some years ago about fear, and the perception of strangeness.  A very wise old man, Professor MAR (Phil) Barker who for a number of years was part of, and headed the now disbanded University of Minnesota South Asian studies department described his experiences as a young man from the United States, armed with nothing much more than a sense of adventure and a linguistics degree, exploring remote parts of India back in the 1950s.  He encountered a group of people who were previously unknown, the kind of experience we associate with remote parts of the Amazon in South America.  He couldn't speak to them and they could not speak to him; they had no common language.  Each appeared as foreign, as different as it is possible to seem to the other, and neither had expected their encounter.  There was no one to act as interpreter.
Phil did not wish to appear aggressive, and he did not wish to appear fearful.  Customs in what is expressed by body language,  particularly gestures, can have dramatically different, even insulting, meanings from one culture to another.
So in a moment that was inspired he did something brilliant.  He did not approach closer, for fear of appearing aggressive.  He did not run, for fear of being seen as either fearful, or worse as someone who was guilty of doing something bad or wrong.
He simply sat down where he was standing when he saw these other people, and let them approach him.  They came to accept him, and he studied their language and their culture, the first person from 'outside' their small and isolated world to do so, a personally and academically enriching experience for Phil, and for the study of anthropology and linguistics. 
Phil died on March 16, 2012, and I am grieving for him as I write this.  But what lives on for me from Phil was his courageous, gentle example when faced with a frightening unknown.  What lives on for me is a love of languages, and of adventure, and of encountering people who are different than myself.
George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin had a common language, a generally common culture of origin.  They should have had everything that was necessary to communicate with each other, to clarify misunderstanding.  What got in the way of that happening was fear, and worse than fear, prejudgment and stereotypes rather than facts, and a willingness to act violently on them.
Trayv0n was frightened because George Zimmeman behaved in a way which reasonably concerned him; and he tried to walk away.  George Zimmerman in his fantasy of avenging angle vigilante apparently chased Trayvan, giving him further cause for fear.  And George Zimmerman was so afraid of his stereotype of black men that he confronted Trayvan Martin which he did not have the authority to do, apparently initiated a physical confrontation, and then shot him.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened instead, if Trayvon Martin had just sat down when George Zimmerman approached.  Given the prejudgment that Zimmerman had, from the numerous 911 calls where he saw every black man as a criminal, I'm skeptical if that or anything else Trayvan could have done would have averted the shooting.
All of the violence was avoidable, and the first step in avoiding that violence was not to jump to the wrong conclusion.  The second step would have been to be slow to violence without a clearer threat, which the Stand Someone Else's Ground law in the Gunshine State makes too easy, with too little consequence.
Not all of the faulty thinking of George Zimmerman were based on his fear of black men.  Just carrying a gun contributed to his perception.  From an MSNBC.com article "Holding a gun may make you think others are, too"
In the study which was carried out well before the shooting, undergraduates at Notre Dame and Purdue glimpsed scenes of people holding objects and had to decide quickly whether the object was a gun. The results showed they were biased toward thinking so if they themselves were holding a toy gun, rather than a plastic ball. Just having a gun nearby didn't make a difference, researchers found.
Why is that? Brockmole said people are primed to act in the world rather than just passively see it. So their minds have to contain information both about what they see and what they might do in response. Evidently, each kind of information can influence the other, he said.
He said the work is not intended to support gun control, but it suggests that people should know that when they hold a gun "that might change how you're going to interpret what's around you."
Brockmole's findings make sense, said Evan Risko, who studies perception and attention at Arizona State University. "Our perception is influenced by a number of different factors, and that can have important consequences," he said.
Dennis Proffitt, who studies visual perception at the University of Virginia, said there are many reasons why one person might think another is armed, such as if he is worried about his own safety or if he thinks the other person is a robber. The effect of holding a gun oneself "could be part of the story" in Florida, he said.

Geraldo Rivera is wrong.  The fault is not in how someone dresses, or the way they wear their hair and jewelry, the style of slang speech they affect or the language they speak.  It is just as wrong for Rich Santorum to tell the people of Puerto Rico that they need to learn to speak English.  The answer is not uniformity and conformity to what is comfortable for a lot of old conservative mostly white men (or women).
The solution is a more open and inquiring mind, the answer is better critical thinking instead of blind ;violent fear response.  The answer is more individual courage, and less violence.  Without those things, George Zimmerman was simply an execution waiting to happen to someone he feared because of a hoodie, or a skin color, or a gender.  He was predisposed, he went out into the night looking for it, chasing that execution as a vigilante neighborhood watch captain, over and over, until he finally did it.  Worst of all, he believed the gun 'nut' fantasy that shooting a bad guy would make him a hero.
It did not; it proved him a coward who shot an unarmed kid on his way home. 
Those like Geraldo Rivera who are sycophants to the message of the NRA have to find some way to excuse Zimmerman and blame Trayvan Martin, no matter how distorted, twisted and wrong their reasoning.
I wonder what Zimmerman would have done if Trayvan Martin had just sat down, and waited for the police?  I wonder what would have happened differently if Zimmerman had known about the adventurous real life of someone like Phil Barker.  The real solution to preventing the many instances of gun carriers shooting people lies in the power of ideas and concepts and better ways of dealing with confrontations, not the force of bullets through the barrels of guns, powered as much by ignorance as combustion.
Rest in Peace Phil; with a little effort and a lot of luck, your lesson lived will live on after you.