Masking the Truth

In all of the talk about the Trayvon Martin shooting, what I have not heard discussed is how the non-verbal communication present in the encounter may have played a major role in the calculation made by George Zimmerman and possibly largely contributed to the outcome. Specifically, I'm talking about the wearing of a hood.

Putting racism aside, the wearing of a hood communicates danger because the wearer's identity and insights into his psychological state are hidden. That lack of information taps into primordial fears of the Unknown that have roots in the human psyche that go back to neolithic times.

Not surprisingly, in every culture and as far back as the earliest recorded histories and stories, figures attempting to generate fear in their prey have concealed their identities through the wearing of hoods and masks. Ninja assassins wore masks partly to strike fear and hopefully temporarily paralyze their targets. Medieval knights wore helmets that betrayed nothing of the wearer's psychological state. Warriors painted their faces to de-humanize their identity and strike terror in their opponents.

Today, hockey goalies wear masks partly for protection and also partly to intimidate players on the opposing side. The faceless, anonymous foe is far scarier than the one which can be read. The use of a hockey mask by the Jason character is the Friday the 13th movies is not a coincidence.

A modern hood

Whether or not Trayvon Martin understood the non-verbal signals communicated by the wearing of a hoodie is unclear. Perhaps it didn't, as many believe, have associations for him that are linked to the urban gangster culture. But it seems hard to believe that something so hard-wired into the human psyche was not within his awareness and, therefore, it must be assumed that at some level he was willing to communicate the message that hoods convey.

So perhaps Trayvon Martin wasn't "suspicious" because he was black but rather because of the fact that he was wearing a piece of clothing that since ancient times has been worn to generate fear and signal danger.

As such, if the "Justice for Trayvon" movement adopts the wearing of a hoodie as its symbol, it will have to do so in opposition to psychological patterns that have existed for at least a few hundred thousand years.