Charles Blow, a New York Times op-ed columnist, highlighted the media’s role in the Trayvon Martin case at the 10th Annual Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations Spring Lecture on March 20 at UF Law. (Photo by Haley Stracher)

By Jenna Box (3JM)
Student Writer

A man with a gun. A dead teen. A hoodie.

These images have been burned into the minds of Americans as symbols interracial crime, the use of deadly force and diversity in media coverage and crime reporting.

A little more than a year ago, the tragic shooting of a 17-year-old black teen walking home in a hoodie in Sanford, Fla., made waves across national media outlets.

On March 20, the 10^th Annual Spring Lecture put on by the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations titled “At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” brought myriad questions about this case to light through a variety of interdisciplinary panels.

Keynote speaker Charles Blow, a New York Times op-ed columnist, highlighted the media’s role, and experts from nine University of Florida departments offered insight from their unique fields at the all-day event filmed by C-SPAN.

“Academic exploration of public policy issues from a multitude of perspectives cannot only deepen our own understanding but also help build a foundation for thoughtful policy making by those who create the laws, regulations and rules that govern all of us,” Dean Robert Jerry said as he opened the event to a packed audience in UF Law’s Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180.

The case has all the elements of a good story, Blow said: guns and murder, an unarmed boy and a suspicious man, racial profiling and threat responses. The combination of these raised some tough legal, social and racial questions.

Blow mentioned how the victim’s race has affected news coverage. Outside of Florida, he said, the only journalists who seem to write about the case are relatively young black men like him. Also, he mentioned the common topic of discussion: whether a black teen wearing a hoodie was enough to cause “suspicion.”

The arguments that “the way he behaved, the things that he wore, suggested he was not worthy of life past Feb. 26 fall short,” Blow said. “There is nothing that you can wear that gives someone license to shoot someone in the chest.”

Additionally, Blow spoke passionately about the “cocoon” media consumers place themselves in.

“People prefer to be affirmed in their beliefs than challenged,” he said. “I believe that is what we’ve seen in the Trayvon Martin case. People know what they want to believe and only listen to sources who confirm it.”

Alongside Blow, representatives from the UF departments of African-American studies; anthropology; English; health services; history; journalism and communications; philosophy; political science; and sociology, criminology and law, gave lectures and answered questions earlier in the day.

“[Blow] was an exceptional choice,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of CSRRR, Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law and organizer of the event. “He was pitch-perfect and was able to use the case to discuss broader issues of journalism, politics and justice. This was a chance to talk across race, across disciplines on a wide range of issues.”

More than a year after the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, legal, social and cultural questions raised by the case are still being discussed across the country. The Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations will analyze a number of these questions during the 10^th annual CSRRR Spring Lecture, which will bring together experts from nine different departments at UF along with keynote speaker, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow.

“At Close Range: The Curious Case of Trayvon Martin,” will take place March 20, at the University of Florida Levin College of Law in the Chesterfield Smith Ceremonial Classroom, HOL 180. The panel presentations will be from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and Blow’s keynote lecture will be from noon to 1:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public and law school parking restrictions will be lifted in the green lots.

The panels will look at a wide variety of issues raised by the case, from a multitude of academic perspectives. Some of the featured panels include “Jim Crow Riding High: The 21^st Century Assault on African-American Voting Rights in Florida,” “Half-Baked: Weed, Race and the Demonization of Trayvon Martin,” and “Racial Profiling, Security and Human Rights.”

“The Trayvon Martin case is a social touchstone precisely because it serves up topics we’re uncomfortable talking about in public, including race, crime, policing, interracial crime, use of deadly force, black crime victims, Southern race relations, media representations of race, and gun control,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the CSRRR and Chesterfield Smith Professor of Law. “The case offers an important opportunity for us to learn about, discuss and debate these myriad and overlapping issues. Our Spring Lecture event will contribute to the national discussion of the case and emphasize policy recommendations.”

The departments of political science; health services; philosophy; sociology, criminology and law; journalism and communications; history; English; anthropology, and African-American studies will all be represented. The academic papers, which comprise the basis for the panel discussions, will be compiled for the first installment in a new series in collaboration with UF Law’s Lawton Chiles Legal Information Center. The panel agendas and abstracts for the papers can be seen in the Collections of the UF Law Scholarship Repository at, http://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/csrrr_events/10thspringlecture/panels/. For more information regarding the spring lecture, please visit the CSRRR homepage, http://www.law.ufl.edu/academics/centers/csrrr.

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s CSRRR is committed to fostering communities of dialogue on race. The center creates and supports programs designed to enhance race-related curriculum development for faculty, staff and students in collegiate and professional schools. Of the five U.S. law schools with race centers, the CSRRR is uniquely focused on curriculum development.

About Charles Blow

After graduating cum laude from Grambling State University, keynote speaker Blow joined The New York Times in 1994 as a graphics editor and quickly became the paper’s graphics director, a position he held for nine years. The Louisiana native went on to become the paper’s design director for news before leaving in 2006 to become the art director of National Geographic Magazine.

Blow often appears on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, Starting Point and AC360. He has also appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and Hardball with Chris Matthews, Fox News’ Fox and Friends, the BBC and Al Jazeera, as well as numerous radio programs.