New York – Fox News Channel commentator Geraldo Rivera said Friday that the hoodie an unarmed black teenager wore when he was killed in Florida is as much responsible for his death as the man who shot him.
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The veteran TV personality, speaking on “Fox & Friends,” waded in with an opinion on the shooting of Trayvon Martin, a story that has attracted national attention over the past month. He later acknowledged that his comments were “politically incorrect.”
People wearing hooded sweatshirts are often going to be perceived as a menace, Rivera said.
“I’ll bet you money that if he didn’t have that hoodie on, that nutty neighborhood watch guy wouldn’t have responded in that violent and aggressive way,” Rivera said.
The unarmed 17-year-old Martin was killed Feb. 26 in Sanford. He was wearing a hoodie and returning from a trip to a convenience store when neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman started following him, telling police dispatchers he looked suspicious. Zimmerman hasn’t been charged and says he shot Martin in self-defense.
The case brought hundreds of people together in New York with Martin’s parents for a protest march this week. The BET television network said it would air a special, “Shoot First: The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin,” on Monday.
Of Martin, Rivera said, “God bless him, he was an innocent kid, a wonderful kid.” But he said the case should be a warning to parents to watch what their children should wear.
“If you dress like a hoodlum eventually some schmuck is going to take you at your word,” he wrote in a commentary posted Friday on the website Fox News Latino.
Hundreds of people had posted messages on Rivera’s Facebook page by Friday afternoon, the overwhelming majority of them negative about Rivera’s comments.
Rivera compared his own comments to those of fellow Fox analyst Juan Williams, who was fired by National Public Radio in 2010 for saying on Fox that he gets nervous when he sees people on a plane with clothing that identifies them as Muslim.
“No one black, brown or white can honestly tell me that seeing a kid of color with a hood pulled over his head doesn’t generate a certain reaction — sometimes scorn, often menace,” Rivera wrote in his commentary.
Geraldo is a good man with an honest opinion. He is saying the truth which most people in our ever weakening great country are just too liberally scared to say!! G-D bless him.
I just put every hooded sweatshirt in my house in a garbage bag and gave it to Goodwill. My kids are brown skinned (we are Sephardic) and it is not worth being shot for wearing a sweat shirt. Better to be cold.
Me thinks geraldo and his buddy stossell got hit on the heads a bit too many times when they did their pro wrestling special when they started their careers at a real news station (abc)
he just said what people think
This is the dumbest story I have ever read. Geraldo Rivera becomes less and less relevant as the years go by. What a fool. Are the joggers wearing hooded sweatshirts in Central Park all fair game for sharpshooters now?
What a dummy! What an absolute dummy! Geraldo has spent too much time with Sean Hannity and the idiocy is starting to rub off on him!
hoodie on a hoodlum…. especially with it up and u have the ipod on loud, u cant hear a thing.
Geraldo is very upfront and very truthful, He was the only one with reporting the true facts in the Casey Anthony case with no partial sides.
Geraldo is just expressing an honest opinion, and he gave a reason why the hoody has been associated with crime. You can’t condemn a person for stating his honest opinion. Is it politically correct?! No. But (In spite of the pressure exerted by the minority “Civil Rights” organizations and their fellow travelers), this is still a free country.
Interesting side point, Geraldo actually is a Jew! (Mother is Jewish, father is not)
Maybe Geraldo’s mostache makes him look like a drug smuggler…. Would watch out in Florida!
It’s a good thing Shomrim are not armed!! Based on these comments, I’m sure many of the Shomrim have the same mindset. Just because Geraldo confirms a mindset of millions of racists who automatically judge people based on skin color or how they dress, does not make him smart or brave for “telling the truth.” Killing someone because he wears a hoodie is a ridiculous explanation.
Geraldo is a showman; he wrote an autobiography about himself taking credit for numerous affairs, including one while one of his ex-wives was in labor! Personally, I think his remark about the hoodie was just plain stupid.
Watch out! If you wear a “frik” kippah. (big one that covers most of the head), they will invariably think you are a moslem. That might get them shooting too here and there in this environment.
I have been called moslem at least once that I knew about. And I was just wearing a baseball cap.
I spent many years working in slum neighborhods and some kids see hoodies as everyday attire. They can not know that whites associate the hoodie as hoodlum clothing.
The man spoke the truth. When people see people in hoodies it scares them. People just don’t want to listen to the truth. It might be wrong to think like this but it is what people think
My 80 year old father and my six year old nephew had better watch out. Some Florida gun nut might be scared of their sweatshirts and kill them.
Sherry, Chasidic clothes DOES NOT conjure images of drug dealing and cop killing wearing ur pants on the ground and boxer shorts up to ur hoodie DOES! And besides how come we don’t hear more about Zimmermans self defense plea. I want to know what caused the actual shooting to take place.
#1 . This wasn’t a racial killing.
#2. It was in self-defense.
While I believe the Hispanic Zimmerman started up and chased and pushed him. The dead guy decided this is enough to violently attack another human -being.
Sorry, this is called killing in the name of self-defense. Yes, Mr. Zimmerman was wrong, but whatever he did -did not warrant such a violent response. Violence and gang-culture is a way of life in some communities. The victim’s reaction to being provoked & his way of dress proves beyond a shadow of a doubt -he was part of this culture. The liberals here (VIN) & in our country, can’t face reality. We have a subculture in the US and almost e/o in the US is in denial. As a matter of fact in college they discuss this in Sociology & Criminology classes. For every behavior there is a root cause and the subculture is the reason for a lot of it!
This has nothing to do with slavery. But if you repeat the same lie over & over -enough people will believe you. This is because a lot of humans lack intelligence!