"That Awkward Moment When the Hoodie Returns to Simply Being a Hoodie"

by guest blogger Arthur V.

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/04/one-womans-i-am-not-trayvon-martin-vid-goes-viral-does-she-have-a-point/

I was referred to the video found in the above article by a student of mine. I would say this post is an addition to the original article I had posted containing the blog post about white people never looking suspicious. In this article, the author talks about a video that has gone viral titled "I am NOT Trayvon Martin." In this video, a young woman talks about how the shirt or hoodie she would wear would say "I am George Zimmerman," as it represents the indoctrination of the idea white people are given that labels black people as sub-human. A lot of the things she says in the video echo many of my frustrations with this entire situation.

A hoodie or a shirt bearing the words I am George Zimmerman for white Americans to wear would have much more of an impact than trying to empathize with black Americans and place themselves in the position of Trayvon Martin. I find these words and this claim to be much more powerful because although I am not considered "white," I too have been indoctrinated with the fear of the "other." We all have. And wearing a hoodie or a shirt claiming understanding gives us a free pass to never admit that.

I have tried to assert the false success of the "hoodie protest" as being a trivialization of the tragedy that actually occurred, but my efforts seem to be of no avail. In the class I teach, I made a comment about how I don't know if someone is protesting or if they are just simply cold. The fact that the level of investment that goes into wearing a hoodie as a symbol of protest is so low, has promulgated this vehicle of "civic engagement" as the most popular. Sadly, that is all it is: Popular. Like the title of this post, it is a meme; a meme in which we place the smallest bit of understanding in order to give it temporary significance, share it like a sound bite so that it is MUCH easier to delete from our cultural narrative once the next tragedy begs for memetic representation. And once the hoodie returns to being another article of clothing, we will return to the same oppressive society responsible for Trayvon Martin's death.

Allow me to point out one last interesting aspect of this whole case. We have an individual, Trayvon Martin, being killed by another individual, George Zimmerman. We know Trayvon Martin is black and we assume through his surname that George Zimmerman is white and therefore we initiate the dichotomy between white and black. Now look up a picture of Martin and a picture of Zimmerman and place them side by side and realize that if we had viewed these pictures before hearing any details and asserted that one killed the other, that dichotomy is non-existent. We are reinforcing the dichotomy between white and black and if we continue to color-code people based on their race, then we are forced to organize these "colors" and recognize those who contrast with ourselves.