Originally posted over at The Lead Type

These are the facts as they currently stand.

The boy stepped out to a local 7-Eleven in Sanford, Florida last month to purchase an iced tea and a bag of Skittles candy. He wore a sweatshirt with a hoodie which was pulled over to cover his head. It was slightly raining that evening. On his way back from the store, the boy caught the attention of an unofficial, unregistered, self-appointed, gun-carrying neighborhood watchman who began to follow the boy in his car. While following, the man called the authorities to alert them of a “very suspicious guy.”

After several admonitions by the 911 operator not to pursue the boy and the man continuing to do so, after the man demanding to know of the boy what he was doing there, after the boy imploring to the man as to why he was being followed, there was a scuffle, there were shrieks for help, and there was a shot fired. The man was found standing over the boy. The boy lay on the ground, lifeless.

The killing of Trayvon Martin last month has captured the nation’s attention and stirred its outrage by the apparent vigilante-style killing of the 17-year-old boy. It seems to have a perfect storm of details—a killing of a child, an African American child, by a White man with possible racist motives in a manner that appears to show the child being relentlessly hunted. The ugly ghosts of this country’s dark history seem to have emerged once again with this tragedy.

Compounding this outrage is the additional fact that the Sanford Police Department allowed Martin’s killer, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, to leave the scene without detaining him for further questioning. He remains free as of this post.

These tragedies, the ones that appear heinous in their ugliness and injustice, have the social effect of forcing people towards a state of reflection—people will take a hard look into our society and eventually arrive at focal points which ultimately illustrate something that lies at the core of our America.

A focus, for example, can be on the use and apparent ineffectiveness of Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ justifiable homicide law with which Zimmerman might invoke should the day come when he is to be tried for his actions. The law allows individuals to use force, even deadly force, if they “reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” Before its inception in 2005, there were 43 justifiable homicides in the area where Trayvon lived. That yearly rate more than doubled in the years after the law was enacted.

We can focus on this killing’s racial undertones: on the possibility that George Zimmerman killed on an un-checked impulse of bigotry and racism. We can focus on the fact that the 911 recordings have Zimmerman using loaded phrases like “these assholes always get away” and possibly even “fucking coon.” Sadly, these reinforce the notion that America is still by no means a post-racial society.

We can even focus on the fact that the media initially labeled Zimmerman as White and later switched to labeling him Latino, though his father is Jewish, and how we will never hear him being refered to on a newscast, magazine, or newspaper as “Zimmerman, a Jewish 28-year-old…” Is the narrative just easier for the American public to digest if a Latino is linked to a crime? I digress…a topic for another time, I’m sure.

Of all these focal points and others that have since been mined and developed, I find the most intriguing to be the hoodie argument. It goes something like this: Trayvon Martin was killed because the wearing of the hoodie marked him as a thug, gangster, and overall “very suspicious guy.” The argument garnered its best eloquence by Geraldo Rivera, stating last week on Fox News, “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin‘s death as much as George Zimmerman was.”

The hoodie is responsible. That’s the argument. Simple and to the point. Also incredibly short-sighted and surprisingly ignorant coming from Rivera, himself a former lawyer whom, it would seem, would be capable of knowing the distinctions of responsibility.

Let’s all admit here that the clothes you wear say something about you, that people will peg you into a social pigeon-hole because of what you have on, that the mind thrives on seeking patterns and making associations, and that a person wearing a hoodie just might bring to mind grainy images taken from convenience store security cameras.

The problem with all of this, the problem that Geraldo Rivera and those that have echoed the same sentiment after him fail to see, is that yielding to this idea means accepting the fact that you have surrendered a crucial amount of your critical thought for the easy route of blaming the victim. Nevermind the actions of Zimmerman, nevermind the admonitions of law enforcement, nevermind the possible bigoted motives, the loaded language, the fact that if this pseudo-community-rent-a-cop with his own police record had simply stayed in his car and waited for authorities, we’d possibly never heard of Trayvon Martin.

Nevermind all of that. It’s the hoodie. Nothing else.

There is nothing explicit in a hoodie that makes it dangerous. Were that true, the sweater section of every Target, Gap, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Neiman Marcus catalogues would be nothing short of danger and thuggery for sale. And what of public figures seen wearing hoodies? Musicians, actors, politicians? Fox News contributors? (A picture of Geraldo Rivera and Bill O’Reilly at a baseball game both sporting hoodies is an internet search away.) All thugs? All “very suspicious?” Shall we unholster our guns from now on at the slightest inclination from every passerby to pull over their hoodie?

Of course not. There were other factors that night in Sanford, Florida. There were other things at play far more than simple fabric and stitching.

Raised, schooled, and now working and living in Southeast Los Angeles, the hoodie is inescapable. It’s on the mother walking her children to school. It’s on the man getting in his car to go to work. It’s in the people running around South Gate Park in the early hours and in the evenings. It’s on the guys waiting for a job to drive up at the Home Depot on Firestone or on Slauson. It’s on the teen girl walking home with her teen boyfriend who also wears one. It’s on the men who smoke cigarettes and talk outside 7-Eleven in the mornings. It’s on the cholo as they stand in their front yard. It’s on the cop that slowly drives by. It’s on a young man somewhere who, very soon, will indeed go to the corner store to buy a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. It’s on you as you go about your weekend duties. It’s on me as I type these words.

No, Mr. Rivera, it isn’t the hoodie that is “as much responsible” for the killing of Trayvon Martin. It is imperative that we take other factors into account to arrive at a comprehensive account of just what happened that evening. It may end up being something uncomfortable and ugly and difficult to face. Truth, however, often is.

Originally posted over at The Lead Type

Rule number one of management: it’s ALWAYS your fault.

While this can be said to generally hold true in the workplace, it should by no means be taken as an “out” for employees to behave irresponsibly or unprofessionally in their line of work. The teenager at the deep fryer making french fries has a manager over him who is responsible for his training and supervision, but she ultimately cannot be hovering over the kid at all times – he needs to perform his duty correctly and professionally.

Still, rare is the time a customer requests to see the fry cook when things go wrong. Should the order of over-cooked food be returned by a customer, it is surely to be accompanied with the sternly said phrase, “I’d like to see the manager!”

Rule number one of management: it’s ALWAYS your fault.

French fries are one thing, however. Children in the classroom are entirely another.

With the horrifying details emerging from Miramonte Elementary School in recent weeks concerning lewd acts allegedly performed by former teacher Mark Berndt, to say nothing of the subsequent allegations of further teacher misconduct by other individuals around Los Angeles Unified, there can be no shortage of blame to be placed at the foot of these individuals by the public should they ultimately be found guilty. If these allegations turn out to be true, they represent the very worst realm to which humanity can stoop to — the conscious, malicious manipulation and abuse of those members of our society who cannot defend themselves.

While the media — at times justified and other times irregardless of facts — has traditionally been quick to pounce on classroom teachers for the ills found within the world of education, I propose that we change our focus on these events away from the accused, if only temporarily. Placing these accusations aside for the moment, hard as it may be, we come quickly to a separate but equally important question in these tragedies, “Where was management?”

Before going further, the intention here is by no means to justify or minimize the deplorable acts that have allegedly occurred, one would be near insane in attempting to do so. Still, seeing now that the accusations against Mr. Berndt date back at least 15 years, if not more, we have to wonder at the extent to which the administration at Miramonte and other schools actively knew and addressed the improprieties that might have been taking place on their campus.

Allotments can be made for lapses in oversight, the supervisor cannot perpetually hover over the employee. But Mr. Berndt’s alleged actions were methodical and deliberate. It can be safe to say that, on one single morning, an otherwise professional employee doesn’t simply hatch up the idea of blindfolding and gagging their students for a photograph’s sake, much less place insects on their face or feed them his bodily fluids.

Allegations going back fifteen years? At least? And he was still allowed in the classroom with no heightened sense of supervision on management’s sake? It begs the question of whether or not management truly knows (or even bothers to know) who’s working for them.

French fries are one thing. Children in a classroom are indeed another.

The protective impulse of a parent would be hard-pressed to find a punishment severe enough for the likes of Mr. Berndt should these allegations turn out to be true. Were I the parent of one of the alleged victims, I should hope the law reaches the accused before I do.

This aside, though, I don’t think I’m alone in emphatically and sternly demanding that, when it comes to employee improprieties with school children, many of us would really like to speak to the manager.