Writing at Alternet, Salon, and my own site We Are Respectable Negroes, I have argued that George Zimmerman is a murderer, one motivated by racism, an over-identification with Whiteness and White Authority, as well as a fetish for playing cop to kill a person who was guilty of walking while black in the "wrong" neighborhood.
At present, George Zimmerman's attorneys are trying to defame and discredit Trayvon Martin's character by releasing text messages and photos of him acting in a "criminal" manner.
However, there is little discussion of the following issues which would suggest that Zimmerman has many defects of character and behavior.
George Zimmerman was arrested for domestic violence. He was apparently on mood altering drugs while pursuing an unarmed person against police instructions, and then killing said innocent. George Zimmerman was also accused of committing sexual assault and molesting a family member. George Zimmerman also assaulted police officers.
Thus, some questions.
How do these facts enter into the prosecution's case? Why is the public not hearing more about Zimmerman's character defects? By attacking Martin's character--and on issues that have little if anything to do with Zimmerman's motivations for chasing down and murdering an innocent person--are Zimmerman's attorneys now open to an attack on their client's questionable background?
Black youth are made into adults for purposes of incarceration, harassment, and murder by the State, as well as those overly identified with Whiteness and White Authority. Black adults are infantilized by those who want to argue that we are not worthy of citizenship, are stuck on a "plantation," and seek to disenfranchise us at the polls. This paradox typifies black life during Jim and Jane Crow and through to the post civil rights era.
A one sided attack on Trayvon Martin when George Zimmerman's character and motivations have not been equally scrutinized is a function of that same dynamic.
How Trayvon Martin is guilty as opposed to being presumed innocent, and the burden of proof is on his family and attorneys to prove Martin's right to live when confronted by the murderous machinations of a vigilante killer, are more proof that black life remains cheap in the Age of Obama--and how African-American's lives are (quite literally) in some ways less valuable than they were centuries ago.
Black kids walking home are all black beast rapist giant Negroes in the eyes of people like George Zimmerman and those who support him. "Niggerization" is real. Never forget that fact; do not let your kids, who may happen to be black and brown, forget that fact either.