NEW YORK (AP) - 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.
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.
stanchaz has left a new comment on your post "Fox's Rivera: Fla. teen's hoodie had role in death...":
Blame the Hoodie? GIVE ME A BREAK. It was raining .... the kid was running .....and being stalked .......and ....SORRY, but we don't ALL use Totes umbrellas when going to the corner grocery store for a snack. Nor should we risk losing our very lives while doing so! Mr. Rivera: you should be ashamed of your inane, insensitive comments about Trayvon, and your attempts to create "excuses" for the inexcusable actions of judge-jury-and-executioner George Zimmerman (and those that would imitate him). We are becoming a society that seeks and sees threats under every rock; a frightened society that sees danger with every “other” that is not just like us; a manipulated society with control-freaks running rampant (whether politicians or mayors or police chiefs or individuals). Power-hungry people that are only too eager to take advantage of our fears; that are only too eager to get away with anything and everything that they can, that are only too willing to deprive us of our our liberty (and sometimes our lives).....all in the name of defending it. What a shell game. But were it only a game. For it includes the worst provisions of the Patriot Act, the police spying on innocent people, papers-please and stop&frisk gone wild, the “right” to indefinitely detain Americans without trial, and out-of-control homicidal vigilantes such as we have tragically seen here. It’s a slippery slope that ultimately leads to a police state/Orwellian mentality that is more typical of places such as China or Cuba - NOT the America that I know and love. We USED to stand proud and free, and contrasted our open society to such sorry places. Now we imitate them. Our country is better than this. Our values are better than this. WE are better than this. Don’t blame the hoodie......blame what we are becoming, and allowing, and doing as a society. As Shakespeare once said: the fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves. For we have come to accept things that should NEVER be accepted by a freedom-loving people. It’s time... it’s way past time, to have the strength and courage to reverse course.
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