David Banner on Trayvon Martin and What We Need To Do Now

It has taken me a while to collect my thoughts and reflect on the killing, demonization and disrespect of Trayvon Martin.  George Zimmerman shot and killed this 17 year old for for being "suspicious" in his relatives gated community as he walked with a hoodie carrying Skittles and an iced tea after a store run during the Super Bowl last February.  The family didn't know he was in the morgue for 3 days, police wouldn't release the 911 tapes to them and treated their murdered child like a perpetrator with constant references to his being a "Black male" in the incident report. They needed international media coverage, marches and politicians to mobilize en masse before Zimmerman would even be arrested for anything. It's all been so heartbreaking as I look at his young full face and see the grieving faces of his parents on one more media outlet asking for simple justice. 

But what has shocked me has been the little Black Enterprise interview with hip hop artist, David Banner, and his compelling analysis of the event.  I'm shocked because no Black pundit put it down the way he did with an understanding of social power, the underlying issues America has with Black men and what Black folks need to do to effect any change.  For me, this is one of the most shining moments in recent hip hop history.  Insight, information and social critique used to be normal in hip hop, now we get to hear it after a tragedy by an MC who also happens to be a brave intellect, music producer and businessman.


As I think about it, I didn't see any brothers from the music industry in all the media coverage about the killing analyzing or voicing their outrage about it, at least not eloquently or with any real insight.  The Miami Heat, politicians and actors have all put their hat in the ring with support but I couldn't find a prominent brother in the music business which has so much attention and influence on the minds of young Black men to make some noise the way Kanye West did back when he spoke honestly about George Bush during Katrina (even Chaka Khan produced a song in support).  Wonder what's got their collective tongues tied?  However, the exception is David Banner who put it in clear terms: that the fear of Black men and the fear of reprisals that haven't occurred  from Black America, given the history of oppresion, puts people on edge and on the offensive to strike first, maybe because of some innate fear about the physicality of Black men,  their perceived sexual prowess or the media's fixation with Black criminality.  Maybe its a combination of all these things.  But there's definitely something that makes people very uncomfortable with our men and feel that they have some power to control their behavior. 


The state legislatures created the Stand Your "Redneck" Ground Law to give citizens the right to protect themselves if they feel threatened.  How vague, you can feel threatened by anything, doesn't mean that anyone is actually threatening you.  Arizona Governor, Janice Brewer, accosted our president when he deboarded Airforce One about something she didn't like in a book that he allegedly said.  So she aggresively puts her finger in his face and lets him know how she feels.  Afterwards during an interview about her conduct with the president, she said "I felt threatened".  This was interesting since she ran up to him and was the aggressor, and incidentally the Secret Service should've had her ass face down on the tarmac.  So basically you can aggress against a Black man, even the President, then claim to feel threatened and play the victim and get away with it the way she did.  But can a Black man stand his ground if he feels threatened by Whites? Trayvon Martin was killed because he didn't make a White man feel comfortable.  Period.  Zimmerman's safety was never in question until he accosted a teenager who was doing nothing wrong.  It's so sad and upsetting, the police are using their guns and badges to control the movement of any Black man they want to with unwarranted stop and frisk tactics and now average White citizens feel that extends to them too.  There's been a growing sense that we are living in a police state, at least in the Black community.  But as this case becomes clearer, it seems many whites feel deputized by their whiteness to control the behavior of Black men they deem threatening.


I like what David Banner says about this sense of fear the majority has about this unseen internal rage that we don't express, especially given all that's been done to us, and that there's this unspoken fear that we would seek reprisals if put under certain conditions, conditions like one more of our children being murdered for being a "suspect".  I know how powerful a thing Black rage is, but the unhealthy truth is that we're more likely to turn that energy against each other.  As David says, we're killing each other.  We may rob or steal from them, but the greatest damage we do is to each other.  But in this year of big political shenanigans, will we make the overarching issue the targetting of Black men by the criminal justice industry a real political issue that we can leverage?  Every other group is lobbying and doing the political shuffles to get some of what they want but Black people.  We get cast with President Obama's rising tide and hope our boat doesn't sink instead of holding our politicians accountable and leveraging our strong democratic votes to get government to address the contemporary nature of policing that is assisting in destroying our community.


There are broader systemic disparities we need to focus on like the mass incarceration of Black men, draconian stop and frisk tactics that cast drag nets in our neighborhoods to justify why cities keep increasing the numbers of police officers as crime rates drop. Drugs (the abuse and sale) in the White community goes undiscussed in the national dialogue on drugs and crime. Suffolk County, NY has an increasing problem with affluent young Whites addicted to heroine, but you won't see this at all on the evening news.  Let's not even add to the mix the addiction and abuse of crystal meth, ecstasy and prescription pills that are at epidemic levels and overwhelming hospital ERs in certain parts of the country but you won't see that on 60 Minutes.  Then, are the incarceration rates of Whites increasing alongside these increasing numbers of drug use?  Are the police stopping and frisking White teens to catch all the drugs that are being made, used and sold in their communities?  We can't let the Trayvon Martin case be relegated to one more of the injustices we have to suffer and hope and pray for a conviction. 


There are bigger issues for us to pay attention to and force ourselves to wake up and take action.  Wearing a hoodie as a sign of protest isn't enough.  That silent, primal yell that so many of us had when we first saw the pictures of Trayvon in his football uniform, on the ski slopes or on horseback made many hearts ache because he could be our son, nephew or little cousin.  He was a child from a solid family that gave him exposure to the bigger world and not the stereotype of the young black thug the media loves and sadly we've come to worship.  They seemed to have done all the right things and shouldn't have had to bury their baby.  But we don't do any favors to the rest of our youth struggling to stay alive with a bulls eye on their backs if we don't at least maintain a concerted effort to keep our agenda on policing alive and on the minds and pocket books of our law makers.