Taxonomy of Whiteness: An Application Through Zimmerman and Martin

Too much intellectualizing and not enough common sense. I honestly think the Stand Your Ground Laws and the Castle Doctrines need to be called Kill or Be Killed statutes. Not that I'm a linguist; but the rhetoric of those laws scream patriotism, machismo and patriarchy with impunity. "A man's home is his castle." Only the weak back down, "stand your ground!" But if you call it what it is literally (you are in a situation where you are about to be killed unless you kill) I think it forces self accountability and a cognition of human life, if only for a nano second. Though I will never know what happened, I believe Zimmerman "inserted" himself into a kill or be killed situation with the upper hand (a firearm) which to me was willfully negligent. I wonder had he not had a gun, would he have been so quick to get out of his vehicle. Would love to hear open honest comments. Last point, there are so many layers of race around this tragedy. I'll choose one that hasn't been talked about as much; the fact that it took 43 days and a social media campaign to force an arrest. If Zimmerman were African American and Trayvon was a "pretty white female" I firmly maintain that he would have been charged with every shooting since Lincoln and detained in police custody in under 43 minutes, possibly with a few bumps and lacerations. For me, as an African American man, as one who studies media and the social constructivist nature of it, it is exceedingly painful to have to constantly validate my existence, my humanity, my inalienable rights just to even breathe in a post racial American apartheid. That is what I honestly think dominant society has yet to fully understand; no one wants to be branded a problem; however, this Zimmerman case not only opened old wounds for the souls of Black Folk who have been problematized through every American institution, literally since Black Folk got off the boat, but that decision, albeit legal due process, rubbed salt in those wounds. To me, its not anger, but its pain, its real, and it hurts.