On this story, there is a certain degree of understanding that comes from minorities, and particularly African-Americans, just because weve lived it, said Don Lemon, a CNN weekend anchor who has covered the case extensively for the last two weekends. He recalled that in a planning meeting for his program, one of his producers, a black mother of two teenage boys, was almost in tears as she said, Weve got to do something on this story.
As the case was catapulted onto the national agenda and calls for Mr. Zimmermans arrest increased, prominent black journalists and commentators wrote about it in highly personal terms. This is the fear that seizes me whenever my boys are out in the world: that a man with a gun and an itchy finger will find them suspicious, Charles M. Blow of The New York Times wrote on March 17.
A day later, Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post wrote of the rules he was taught as a teenager: Dont run in public, Dont run while carrying anything in your hands, Dont talk back to the police.
One of the burdens of being a black male, he wrote
