To me it's rather telling that the Trayvon Martin incident has been part of the national dialog for a week and a half and the Republican candidates said nothing on their own. When Mitt Romney was asked about it around Tuesday or Wednesday, while in a press the flesh line by a reporter, he ignored the question. Other than a few Republicans in the district where Trayvon was shot, no national Republican figure made any comment. Once the President made his statement on Friday, comments were made by the candidates, Republican pundits and other right wing supporters. Disregarding some of the inflammatory remarks by Geraldo Rivera, Glenn Beck's website The Blaze and others looking for spectacular headlines rather than addressing the issue, the responses, especially by the Republican candidates who bluster and boast about being courageous leaders and innovators, have been akin to a police officials in TV dramas who are about to interview the grieving parents and start of with “We're deeply sorry for your loss,” then move on. They have been more concerned about the law which gave the leeway, in some minds, for Zimmerman to feel he had a right to shoot a hoodie wearing black teen with nothing more than a cellphone, Skittles and an iced tea. Of course, some have to give a dig in on the President, because when the President says if he had a boy he would look like Trayvon, it is a statement that can't be ignored. I remember a rather interesting discussion I had with a couple of black men just after Obama was elected. The same topic came up when I visited my parents a year ago. Both groups said they felt ashamed but grateful that Obama only had daughters. They felt if he had a son, especially a pre-teen, or heaven forbid, a teen-age son, Omaba would never had been elected President. There reason for the attitude was a black male teenager is the American nightmare, and to have a candidate with a black male teenager could be a deal breaker.

Before you start thinking something like that would be ridiculous, I would first remind you that in 2012 we have candidates for President who are pushing racial buttons with their supporters, before John Huntsman left the race there was a commercial put out by Ron Paul supporters who insinuated Huntsman was less than loyal to America by showing lots of images of Communist China. He was an ambassador to China and one of the images shown was Huntsman with an Asian child, his adopted Asian child. Also remember, during the South Carolina race of 2000, in a close race the rumor spread that McCain had a black baby. While that shouldn't have been a factor, the adopted baby he had was from India, but the rumor of the baby being black cost McCain South Carolina and the nomination.

Because of the stigma of being a black teenager in America I got very upset with the Geraldo comment, which he has doubled down on, that minority youth shouldn't wear hoodies because it makes them a target. In 1983, Michel Jackson's Thriller was released in theaters ahead of the 1940s movie Fantasia, to try and qualify for an academy award. I was in college, at UCLA, and it was showing in Westwood, which is close to the campus. I went to a midnight showing to see it. It was around 3am when the movie let out. As I was walking back to the dorms I was stopped by the police. Let me tell you what I was wearing, because I remember it well. I had on brown pants, a dark red t-shirt and a jean jacket on. The jean jacket had patches on it from numerous science fiction movies and shows, like Star Trek, Space: 1999, Star Wars, Aliens and Outland to name a few. There was no way under God's green Earth did I look like a gangster. Other people had been let out of the theater and were heading back to campus, so I wasn't out alone nor was I heading in a direction others weren't heading.

At first I think they were surprised when they asked me where I was coming from when I said it was Fantasia, but when I said I was a UCLA student, they wanted to know what sport I played. I'm a college student, stopped by the police and asked questions because, as I found out later from them, there had been 'suspicious activity in the area.' I'm there with the police and all I can do is remember all the stuff my parents told me about contact with the police. It's something every black male knows. I get a big joke today when I hear some people I know, younger white guys, talk about how they have rights and can and will challenge the police. Some actually have, and have been embolden by it. Good for them. I would have loved to have challenged the police on why they stopped me. I saw students walking by, looking at me like I had done something wrong (the police were questioning me so I had to have done something). I knew the police were in the wrong, just wanting to hassle me. As much as I wanted to say something I couldn't. Any resistance could have gotten me shot. Hey, it might have been an overactive imagination that made me think that, but when I got stopped was in the early 80s. We should have made progress but apparently not, if a kid could get shot carrying Skittles and an ice tea.

The most humiliating thing to me about that incident was I felt proud of myself because when they asked for my ID, I had practiced hard in making sure I could get the wallet out my pocket, open it up and pull out my ID with two fingers, because I had seen on some show that this allowed someone not to get killed by the police. I was proud because of a trick I learned on TV.

So when I hear Republicans not taking a leadership stand and not commenting on the case I call them cowards. When I hear excuses being made, implying Trayvon's clothes might have gotten him killed, I call people making those statements cowards. When I hear people go into the usual trope about why is Rev. Al Sharpton 'sticking his nose' into another civil rights case, I call them idiots. As people such as Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, Ed Shultz and Lawrence O'Donnell have said, if it weren't for social media, if it hadn't been for the grass roots effort, Trayvon would have been another statistic, another 'dangerous black youth' that was killed because of a wanna be cop hunting for him. Zimmerman's crime would have stayed hidden by the authorities who are suppose to protect us.