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The George Zimmerman trial declared open season on hoodies, and Fox News guest pundit Geraldo Rivera gave it a thumbs-up:
"The hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was." Trayvon Martin would be alive today were it not for the fact that he was wearing thug wear. Zimmerman acted in self-defense."
How is Rivera's thinking any different than the thinking of those who blame rape on the victim's attire? "Well," we hear them say, "what do you expect? Just look how she was dressed. She was asking for it." Geraldo Rivera displayed the exact same mentality in assigning the cause of Trayvon's death.
Of course, anyone with even a modicum of sense knows that no matter what a woman is wearing, or even if she is wearing nothing at all, her attire or lack of attire does not serve as an open invitation for her to be raped.
If the hoodie did play into Zimmerman's thinking, as his defense team and Geraldo claimed, that mindset should have served to confirm his guilt, not to establish his innocence.
The racist bottom line regarding Trayvon Martin's murder is quite simple. Michelle Alexander, in an interview on Democracy Now got it right:
"Trayvon Martin would be alive today if he had been born white. If Trayvon had been white, it is beyond any reasonable doubt that he would not have been stalked by Zimmerman, and he would not have found himself in a fight with George Zimmerman. There would have been no fight, no trial, no verdict, no dead boy."
