IF THE HOODIE FITS: REFLECTIONS ON THE TRAGEDY OF TRAYVON MARTIN

By: Paul S. Marchand

SUMMARY: In addition to inflicting unimaginable suffering on his family, the senseless killing of Trayvon Martin has also become one local government’s worst nightmare, as well as reminding all of us in the commonwealth who are somehow Other just how equivocal our status in that commonwealth really is.

ARE WE TRAYVON MARTIN?  Does the hoodie fit?

Like millions of Americans, I have been watching the tragedy of Trayvon Martin --- the black kid whose hoodie, Arizona Iced Tea and Skittles apparently frightened George Zimmerman so badly that Zimmerman shot him to death --- unfold like a slow-moving train wreck.  I’ve watched the coverage, and I’ve heard the emerging battle cry “I am Trayvon Martin.”  As both a former elected public official, and as a gay man, I find the drama playing out in Sanford, Florida deeply troubling.

Having served eight years as an elected public official, I know at first hand what chaos an event like this can cause in local government.  Every mayor, council member, and city manager wants and hopes for good publicity for their community.  Failing that, those of us who have been in public life can attest that the next best outcome is to stay out of the news altogether.

But a senseless killing, like that of Trayvon Martin, is a local government’s worst nightmare.  The negative publicity, the microscopic coverage by local, regional, and national/international news media can undo, in one short news cycle, years of confidence and reputation-building.  Moreover, a single ill considered word can make an already difficult situation orders of magnitude worse.

Thus, I could actually empathize with embattled Sanford city manager Norton Bonaparte as he gave interviews to MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell and Al Sharpton.  I could --- to borrow President Clinton’s sentiments --- feel Mr. Bonaparte’s pain as he tried to walk a fine line between uttering necessary words of consolation and condolence to a family bereaved by the senseless loss of a beloved child, while simultaneously avoiding saying anything that could either prejudice an ongoing investigation, mislead the public, or be construed as an admission of some kind of municipal liability.

Having spent a good part of my adult life either in the legal profession or in public service, where we are under a constant obligation to choose our words with exquisite care, I could understand Mr. Bonaparte’s felt need to steer clear of Scylla, while avoiding Charybdis.

Unfortunately, to a public demanding answers, a public official’s careful attempt to evade the clutches of the devil while not falling into a deep blue sea often comes across not as a careful stewardship of the public trust, but more as a pusillanimous effort to avoid telling what others have already decided is the truth.  Though there is a compelling case to be made for exercising care in utterance at so delicate a time as this, even the most carefully crafted statements on the issue will invariably come across as contrived and untruthful, especially inasmuch as the Sanford Police Department’s mishandling of the case has already preconditioned a skeptical American public to question the motives and good faith not only of the Department, but of the city government to which it answers.  No matter how hard local government tries to apply some form of emollient, or how hard it tries to appease the situation, no good deed on the part of Sanford city government is likely to go unpunished.

If the nightmare now confronting the city fathers and mothers in Sanford, Florida leaves me with a somewhat cynical feeling of “there, but for the grace of God, goes my own community,” it also leaves me with that uncomfortable feeling that comes over any member of the American Commonwealth who is in some manner Other.

There is certainly more than probable cause to believe that Trayvon Martin may well have paid with his life for the “offense” of having the “wrong” skin color for the gated community where George Zimmerman shot him to death.  For to be black in America, almost 150 years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, is still to live in an equivocal and probationary state, in which one’s mere presence in certain parts of the community is enough to excite suspicion, paranoia, and even homicidal tendencies.

As a gay man, I have a luxury, a faculty of negotiating and navigating in the larger world, that my fellow citizens like Trayvon Martin and Barack Obama do not.  Because my mark of differencing is not immediately obvious, I can assume the protective coloration of white, male, heterosexual privilege if I need to.  Like many gay men of my age, I know how to engage in “straight acting” behaviors; unless I choose to be fairly obvious, “dropping hairpins” to reveal my sexuality, I can usually fly below the gaydar of all but the most sensitive of my straight neighbors.

Nonetheless, the instant I choose to be forthright and honest about who and what I am, the entire architecture of privilege within which I can hide myself by remaining silent collapses.  Once I choose to open the closet door and step out into the light, my Otherness can become as dangerous to me as Trayvon Martin’s Otherness was to him. 

For even in the 21st century, being Other in America still carries with it not only a kind of stigma, but also a pervasive suspicion of criminality.  As much as many African-American parents at some point have “The Talk” with their sons, about what they should and should not do when out and about, the queer community also has a way of educating incoming members about what is and is not safe to say or do in a society where large numbers of individuals, including presidential candidates, preachers, and even Supreme Court justices, would all happily compass our vanishing under color of a Levitical proscription.

The murder --- to use the word Norton Bonaparte himself used --- of Trayvon Martin forces us to confront anew the oft-ignored reality so eloquently expressed by President John F. Kennedy, that the rights of all men are diminished when the rights of one are threatened.  If Trayvon Martin can be shot out of hand for being black, or a queer person can be beaten to the point of death for holding his boyfriend’s hand, something is still wrong in our Commonwealth, and all of us who are in some way Other in that commonwealth need to stand together and make common cause.  Whether our mark of differencing inheres in our skin color, our spirituality, or the hardwiring of our intimacies, all of us are in danger when any one of us, whether in a suit, club wear, or just a hoodie, is regarded as a legitimate target simply because of our Otherness. 

Yes, the hoodie fits.  We are Trayvon Martin.

-xxx-

Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California.  He served on the city council there from 2002 through 2010.  The views expressed herein are his own, and not necessarily those of any organization or entity with which he is associated.  They are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice.

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