After creating quite the firestorm, Geraldo Rivera is apologizing for his "hoodie" remarks, saying, "I have obscured the main point that someone shot and killed an unarmed teenager." Last week, Rivera said on the air that Trayvon Martin, a Black teenage boy shot and killed by George Zimmerman, died because he had been wearing a hoodie. Now, he is singing a different tune. "I apologize to anyone offended by what one prominent Black conservative called my 'very practical and potentially life saving campaign urging Black and Hispanic parents not to let their children go around wearing hoodies,'" Rivera said in an email to Politico on Tuesday.
"By putting responsibility on what kids wear instead of how people react to them I have obscured the main point that someone shot and killed an unarmed teenager," Rivera concluded. Critics, pundits and bloggers all hit the wire hard to accuse the TV and radio personality of ignorance for suggesting that by wearing a hoodie, you're instantly perceived to be a "gangsta" and a "menace" to society.
Is an apology enough to curb the damage done by his original commentary? Or, should Geraldo Rivera do more to recant the racist sentiments being adopted by others in his ilk?
