But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon...This is the very reason why I tell my son not to wear hoodies and such "indicators" because when you are dead, it's too late. My message to him has been that this is the society you live in and you have to be realistic. My own parents were as frank to me, when I was a boy; over and over, they said all the talk about equality is just talk, you have to protect your life, and to do so you have to do things white kids don't have to do.
Lots of people are coming down on Geraldo Rivera for tweeting this:
Trayvon killed by a jerk w a gun but black & Latino parents have to drill into kids heads: a hoodie is like a sign: shoot or stop & frisk me
But what country do we live in? In this country, racist cops do not go to prison for killing black boys. (And now we are learning that this exemption extends down to neighborhood watch characters.) In this country, the only way a black boy can succeed is to know he has to work twice as hard as the average white kid. It's not fair, true, but it's a fact of being a black boy in America.
