Trayvon and his hoodie

I'm aware that we already had a pretty lengthy discussion of this in class, but I feel that I should explain some of the points I made because I felt like I was the only one who agreed with the Geraldo Rivera even in the least bit.  Now let me make this clear, what happened to Trayvon is a tragedy and I realize that it's a touchy subject for some so I really hope this doesn't come off in the wrong way.  That being said, what Rivera is saying, at least in my opinion, holds ground and I don't agree with the amount of criticism he got for it.  We saw first hand in the video that was shown on Tuesday how often the suspect of a crime, at least as presented by the news media, is a black man in a dark hoodie.  As far as the average, news watching person is concerned black men in dark hoodies are the prime suspects in most crimes.  Do I think that this is a fair and just assumption to make?  Absolutely not.  A white man wearing a football jersey is just as likely to commit a crime as a black man wearing a dark hoodie, however, the news media rarely describes a suspect like the former.  So because of this constant mentioning of a black man in a dark hoodie committing crime that is presented by the news a stereotype is formed, one that we may or may not use ourselves even if we don't notice it.  So much so to the point where Zimmerman felt the need to confront Trayvon based solely on the assumption that since he was wearing a dark hoodie with his hood up that he was up to no good.  As I stated in our discussion how many people think any of this would have happened if Trayvon was wearing a shirt with a Hawaiian pattern on it?  I, for one, don't think it would have, and that's because you don't hear about people in Hawaiian shirts committing crime on the news.  However, if there was a recent spree of crime committed by people wearing floral patterns then I'm sure that people wearing those types of shirts would be suspected unfairly and unjustly in the same way that Trayvon was suspected.  In a way, I think that the news media is just as responsible for Trayvon's death as anyone.  Obviously they weren't the ones who pulled the trigger, but they were the ones who planted the seed of suspicion in Zimmerman's mind.  This is just my opinion and I in no way intended to offend or piss anyone off, so please just leave it as that.