Don’t Be Threatening’: Geraldo Rivera’s Impossible Advice
While I don’t agree with the author’s cussing, I agree 100% with everything else they wrote
Roberta
Don’t Be Threatening’: Geraldo Rivera’s Impossible Advice
The internet was abuzz with outrage yesterday after comments national joke Geraldo Rivera made on Fox & Friends. In response to the murder of Trayvon Martin, he reflected, "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was." The angry response he unleashed was warranted, but it's worth taking a look at what Geraldo was trying to say — and why he's full of shit.
I was reminded of a series of sexual assaults that occurred on the Berkeley campus in 2009: a man followed women home from late-night parties and attempted to rape them with his finger. His targets were exclusively women in short skirts, which led the campus police department to suggest that women avoid wearing those skirts to parties until the rapist was caught. Many werehorrified — the police response sounded a lot like victim-blaming. But there was a level of practicality to it that goes beyond the typical asshole response to rape, "Did you see what she was wearing?" This predator was targeting women wearing a specific piece of clothing, and not wearing short skirts for a period of time was a form of protection.
There's a key difference between what Geraldo said and what the Berkeley campus police said. There is no serial killer targeting men of color in hoodies, the way Berkeley's serial rapist was specifically focusing on short skirts. Both responses might seem problematic, but only Geraldo's devolves into actually blaming the victim. Targeting the hoodie is just a roundabout way of pinning some blame on Trayvon Martin, who chose what to wear that night. Besides, what he's really saying is, "Don't dress like a 'gangsta' if you don't want to be treated like one." Or as he tweeted yesterday, "Its not blaming the victim Its common sense-look like a gangsta&some armed schmuck will take you at your word."
It is blaming the victim, but that's been argued to death. I'm more interested in the meaning behind Geraldo's words, which in my mind boils down to a warning: Do not act in a way other people might find threatening. Except that's a complete impossibility — the feeling of being threatened is subjective. Geraldo's implication is that racist white men will assume black men in hoodies are out to get them, and he's probably right. But by that same logic, he should be telling white men to tone down their whiteness around black people. If a white man wearing an NRA shirt got shot by a black man, would Geraldo blame the shirt? Maybe it was self-defense. The black man who shot him could have assumed he was another George Zimmerman.
Ignorant people are irrationally threatened by so much of the world around them; it would be impossible to go through life conforming to some sort of neutral, non-threatening ideal. Think of Matthew Shepard, who was murdered in 1998 for being gay. The basis of homophobia is fear: a fear of being hit on by a gay man, of femininity, of being perceived as gay by those around you. Geraldo's message to youths of color is to tone it down. Take whatever it is about your cultural identity that scares others and get rid of it. Following that argument, should gay men act less "faggoty"? If we're going to blame Trayvon's hoodie for Zimmerman's violence, we could also blame Shepard's "gay appearance" for his murder.
The "common sense" Geraldo speaks of is nonsense. To a racist asshole, it's "common sense" that black men are more dangerous. To a homophobic tool, all gay men are out to recruit your children, and to a frightening number of misogynists, women who dress "slutty" deserve to be raped. Barring mandatory uniforms for every person in this country, there is no "common sense" way to dress or talk or act. There will always be someone threatened by you, and that responsibility falls on them — and on law enforcement, whose job is to make sure no one turns a perceived threat into a stupid, fatal mistake.