I first heard of Trayvon Martin’s murder in a tweeted video clip. I followed the story, admittedly neglecting a few of my classes to pursue my interests in the case, through news articles, discussion panels, and more online video clips.
I remember thinking as I made my way through the news coverage, why aren’t we unified as a country on this issue? As this video clip from The Daily Beast discusses, “where’s the outrage?” I would revise this statement to: “where’s the unified outrage?” Because there was a public outcry, and from every direction. There were protests, one in particular was dubbed the ” million hoodie march” as participants assembled in NYC’s Union Square on March 22 to show their solidarity with Trayvon Martin. But there was also a response from another direction, that this public reaction was an overreaction, that George Zimmerman wasn’t a racist, couldn’t be a racist because he is a Hispanic American, or that Americans were simply being sensitive.
Scholars discuss Trayvon Martin’s murder in their response to Karla FC Holloway’s new book, Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics