Let me start out by saying I am a middle aged white woman.  I live in the suburbs and am the mother of three children.  I am a professional educator.  Today, I teach developmental education courses at the college level.  Years ago, I taught eighth grade in the Chicago Public Schools.  I taught in what could only be considered a bad neighborhood, complete with gangs, projects, drugs, teenage pregnancy and parents trying to do the best they could.  I referred to my students as "my kids". My students were, as we used to say, "rainbow".  I was always the palest stripe in the rainbow of my classroom.

The story of Trayvon Martin makes me sick to my stomach.  A seventeen year old boy shot dead in the street.  Why ?  I know I'm not the ony person asking this question, but why ? 

Why did an adult man, at least ten years older and one hundred pounds bigger kill this kid ? What kind of threat could a seventeen year old kid with a bag of Skittles be ?

Many questions come to mind and as I type this I can feel an anger rising up from deep inside of me. I don't know the man who shot Trayvon.  I didn't know Trayvon when he was alive.  I suspect I knew kids like him, but I'm not sure.  I have no idea what kind of a neighborhood he lived in or what his family was like.  What I suspect, is that Trayvon was shot dead based on what an adult man presumed, what he conjured up in his mind, his perception of a young African American male.  How did this man look at an innocent seventeen year old child and see a threat ?  A threat that needed to be shot dead ? What did he assume and what did he base it on ? I don't understand it and I don't like where my mind goes when I think about it. I find myself making assumptions.  Not about Trayvon, but about the man that killed him.

This man was a Neighborhood Watch captain. Isn't the purpose of a Neighborhood Watch to keep a neighborhood safe ?  I'll tell you one thing I know for sure, a neighborhood where innocent people are shot and killed walking to the store IS NOT safe.