Every athlete who is supporting a fight for justice on behalf of Trayvon Martin should be commended, but something may get lost in the translation when whites like Steve Nash don hoodies in tribute to the fallen teen, and the potential misunderstanding relates to discussions of race in sports.
The message could be misconstrued to mean that we are all vulnerable to violent attack if we wear suspicious clothing, and that any of us could have been Trayvon Martin.
If there is a lesson in the horrific events surrounding the death of Martin it is certainly not that we are all in the same boat.
We are not all Trayvon Martin.
In this country, a white person wearing a hoodie does not receive the same level of scrutiny and suspicion that befalls an African-American.
It is important to stress this point to people who promote a post-racial view of society—the idea that race no longer hinders one’s progress in America or that we now live in a color-blind society, supposedly made evident by the election of Barack Obama. This message reverberates on the comment boards of nearly every article that even& ...
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Article written by Sean S. O'Neil
Steve Nash Is Not Trayvon Martin: The Complexity of White Solidarity
March 24th, 2012 by Sean S. O'Neil Leave a reply »
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