RACIAL PROFILING DOES NOT NECESSARILY MAKE ONE A RACIST

Former friend now says George Zimmerman racially profiled Trayvon Martin

"What I know of George and his tendencies and also my opinion is that he racially profiled Trayvon Martin that night because if that had been a white kid on a cell phone, walking through our neighborhood, he wouldn’t have stayed on him the way he did and that’s a fact and I believe that in my heart. … I can only ask for the country to forgive me and today I believe that he racially profiled him based on the color of his skin."

So spoke Frank Taaffe, George Zimmerman’s former neighbor and fellow neighborhood watch volunteer, who was one of Zimmerman’s strongest supporters during the Trayvon Martin murder trial. It seems as though Taaffe had an epiphany of sorts after the death of his brother last month and the deaths of his two sons over the past two years. Taaffe also apologized to Trayvon's family.

Some in the media immediately declared that Taaffe’s epiphany proves Zimmerman was a racist. I say, not so fast!

I am certain that Zimmerman profiled Martin that fateful night based on the color of his skin. But that is no different than what the police do all the time when they see someone who appears to be out of place in a certain neighborhood. Martin was a black youth walking at night in a predominantly white neighborhood that had experienced a number of burglaries. Had the cops seen him that night, they would have stopped Martin and checked out his reason for being there. That may be racial profiling, but that’s also damn good police work.

The fact that Zimmerman racially profiled Martin doesn’t change a thing, and it certainly does not prove Zimmerman to be a racist.

Bob Walsh says: “If I were to see a young white man walking down the street on one side and a young black man walking down the street on the other side, and you were to ask me which one is more likely to be an ex-con, my answer would be the black man. Blacks represent about 12% of California’s population, but about 30% of the prison population. The ability to do math does not make me a racist.”