Here's a hypothetical situation... Trayvon, a 17-year-old, is walking down the street (in this situation, Trayvon has a gun). He sees an unarmed George Zimmerman coming at him; unarmed, but fully able to beat Trayvon to death with his bare hands. Zimmerman starts beating on Trayvon.
Now let's pause. If you were in Trayvon's situation here, would you wait until you had "life-threatening injuries" to shoot Zimmerman? If you shot Zimmerman before you were within an inch of your life, should it be classified as self defense? Or, since you weren't close to dying, should you be locked up for murder?
It's an open and shut case for me as well. Zimmerman thought Trayvon looked suspicious, so he followed him (bad idea on Zimmerman's part, but not a crime). Zimmerman and Trayvon got into a fight (witnesses did say that they saw Trayvon beating Zimmerman), and then Zimmerman shot Trayvon in self defense. Case closed.
Also, have there been any other signs of Zimmerman being racist? If there were other instances of Zimmerman doing bad things to black people, I could maybe believe that he would go so far as to kill one. But, if I remember correctly, there aren't.
Here's the thing. If Zimmerman had shot a white kid, or if Zimmerman had been black, would this be such a big deal to people? No. Just another killing. Isn't there something wrong with that? If anything, that shows that the supporters of Trayvon Martin believe there is a fundamental difference between black and white people besides their skin color. In my opinion, any special treatment -- good or bad -- towards any specific race of people is bad. If you treat them bad... Well, it's obvious why that's bad. But if you treat them better than your own or other races, it shows that you think they're weak and in need of special attention. Either one is bad in my eyes.
If I was in Trayvon's situation (really, I wouldn't have a gun, but wewon't get into why America's gun laws are almost as stupid as half the people in it) I would wait. First of all, let's start with the fact that you forgot to mention that I am stalking said person, and that they ask me why the heck I am stalking them before they attack me. I no know this isn't a random attack for my money or something like that, this is someone who is scared of me and angry with me for something I was doing. Second this person clearly doesn't have a gun, or if they do, they don't plan to use it, or they would've already. Third of all, now I know that he has no plans to shoot me, and is simply trying to either teach me a lesson or leave me badly injured enough that he can get away. I also know that he is roughly half my age, and twenty pounds lighter than me. Chances are, he is going to know me out tops. I don't think you realize how much effort it takes to beat someone to death. Look at what they do in UFC. None of them are even close to death after getting the crap beaten out of them for rounds, and their injuries look WAY worse than Zimmerman's. So no, I wouldn't shoot him after he scratched the back of my head (which, by the way, is pretty hard to do to someone lying on the ground) and punched me a couple times, because that would be completely unreasonable, and I would definitely get arrested. At least I definitely should get arrested.
Actually directly disobeying law enfourcments orders to stop stalking someone is a crime. So then do you think any time someone gets in a fight they should be able to pull a gun shoot a couple times and say "phew, was totally scared I was gonna die there! Let's go to a gun show and see if they want some autographs! yeah! Huh? Guilt? What's that? Never heard of it."
Of course there haven't been signs of Zimmerman being racist before. Racism is practically impossible to prove first of all, second of all, do youthink black people would go and tell the police everytime someone was racist to them? No. First of all because like I just said, it's practically impossible to prove (unless the person actually says "I have done this because you are a black person" and even then they could probably get away with it), second of all,unless the police you reported it to was black, you'd get the same reaction you, and everyone else on this forum, and pretty much every non - black person gives you when you say something is racist "Oh suuure. You black people call everyhing racist." I told a story where someone asked me, a black person if God was a nice person on this forums, and was told to my face "that's not racism."
Like I said, you've been taught that black people lie about racism. That we're stuck in the past, have a chip on their shoulder and just make this stuff up to make up for our shortcomings.
No it wouoldn't have been such a big deal because the chance of it being a racist killing is much lower. Black people have a much shorter much less extensive history of racism. And changing colours is NEVER proof that racism doesn't exist. If that's proof I can say "Oh the KKK weren't racist! What if they had all been black?" or "What if their victims had been white?"Yeah, then it wouldn't have been racist, but that is NOT how it went. That was NOT the situation. The same goes here. This was a black child being killed. Blacks have a history of being killed for their race in america. And by a history I mean recent history as well. We don't get to pretend that race isn't an issue that should be considered.
Trayvon supporeters believe race is an issue because ^THIS not because they believe blacks and whites are fundementally different. However I think most of his supporters would think that black people are more likely to see racism, once again not because we're fundementally different, but because we're raised to recognize it when we see it, where other races are taught to pretend it doesn't exsist, or not notice it at all.
I don't believe in "positive" racism either by the way. I think affirmitave action type stuff is stupid and only furthers the divide between races. If people want to help black people put that money towards giving them more opportunity at a younger age by making the areas they live in better. That way all the people in that area, black and white and chinese and indian and native american and mexican and everything else, have better opportunity.