I am not Trayvon Martin. 
 
 I keep seeing people say, "I am Trayvon Martin." I understand the sentiment. If that is you, then I respect that. 
 
 I am not Trayvon Martin. I am a middle-aged, middle class, overweight white guy. I am also a teacher, and in 20 years of teaching, I have seen plenty of Trayvon Martins. More accurately, I have seen plenty of young men who fit the caricatured image that is being portrayed of this kid in the media, Left and Right. Fox News and MSNBC. I'm guessing that neither portrayal -- saint or thug -- is accurate. People are more complex than that. 
 
 None of the Trayvon Martins that I know deserve to die. They may arouse suspicion, but your paranoia is not their crime. If they do commit a crime, they deserve to have a trial. Trayvon Martin's jury consisted of one person. That is not how we are supposed to do things in America. Unfortunately, that is our reality. 
 
 Here's my point: You don't have to be Trayvon Martin to know this is wrong. You don't have to be black, or young, or a "troubled student" or a pot smoker to know this was murder. And you don't have to be the parent of Trayvon Martin to know this was a gross miscarriage of justice. 
 
 Let me be more blunt: This type of injustice will continue until enough guys like me -- guys who are not Trayvon Martin -- have had enough of it and finally say "No more." 
 
 You don't have to be Trayvon Martin. 
 
 You just have to be human. 
 
 Bob Seay teaches music at a high school in Colorado. His Facebook post, "I Am Not Trayvon Martin," was the beginning of the I Am Not Trayvon Martin meme. ||||| Alex Garland / Demotix / Corbis 
 
 If there is one hopeful note amid all the anguish and recrimination from the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it’s that growing numbers of white people have come to appreciate whiteness for what it is: an unearned set of privileges. And as a result of that dawning awareness, it’s become possible to imagine a day when that structure of privilege is dismantled — by white people. 
 
 Recall that immediately after the killing of Trayvon Martin, people of every race took to the Internet to declare “I am Trayvon Martin.�? They wore hoodies. They proclaimed solidarity. That was a well-meaning and earnest attempt to express empathy, but it also obscured the core issue, which is that Martin died not because he was wearing a hoodie but because he was wearing a hoodie while black. Blackness was the fatal variable. 
 
 (MORE: Maya Angelou Reacts to Zimmerman Trial, Evokes Civil Rights Era) 
 
 And so now, postverdict, a more realistic meme has taken root. On Tumblr and Facebook and elsewhere there is a new viral phenomenon: “We are not Trayvon Martin�? (emphasis mine). Huge numbers of white Americans are posting testimonials and images to declare that it is precisely because they are not black that they have never had to confront the awful choices Martin faced when Zimmerman began to pursue him. 
 
 This isn’t about empathy or the posture of equivalency that empathy can tempt us to assume. It’s about owning up to the unequal privilege of being nonblack and saying, in essence, “I am George Zimmerman.�? And because I am George Zimmerman, I get to have my fears trump reality. I get get-out-of-jail-free cards. I get a presumption of innocent victimhood, no matter what my own acts or attitudes. 
 
 Much has been made about the fact that Zimmerman is white and of Hispanic ethnicity, as if he therefore couldn’t possibly embody white privilege. This is a deep misreading of the dynamics of race and the media in America. As an Asian American, I am endlessly frustrated by how binary and black-and-white — literally and figuratively — the portrayal of race is in our country. Much of the time Asian Americans are an afterthought, or simply presumed foreign. But I assume that had I been the neighborhood watchman that day in Florida, I would have been understood in the media as the nonblack actor. Which is to say, for the limited purposes of this trial, I would have been granted “honorary white�? status — whether or not I wanted it. 
 
 (MORE: Liu: The Uproar Over the Biracial Cheerios Ad Is Actually Progress) 
 
 Whiteness is the unspoken, invisible default setting of American life. We frame our conversations about race in terms of how white people see and what they think they see. We imagine that nonwhite Americans want to be more like white Americans. We imagine that to be American is to be white. When racial minorities complain about the slurs of a Paula Deen or a prank like the faked names of the Asiana pilots, they are often told by whites to stop being so sensitive or to take the context of tradition or history or humor into account. That ability, to dismiss and minimize people of color for being oversensitive, is itself one of the privileges that whiteness confers. The broader privilege that whites have by occupying the omniscient vantage point in media and civic life has to be named and then undone. 
 
 How will it be undone? Not, in the end, by the work of communities of color alone. Minority groups can and must be vigilant, vocal advocates for fair treatment and representation in public life. But if America is to transcend its long conflation of whiteness with Americanness, it will fall on white people — those wise enough to see they are not Martin and humane enough not to become George — to lead us all to that promised land. 
 
 MORE: Angered by Zimmerman Verdict, Some Call for a Boycott of Florida Businesses ||||| This is a set of web collections curated by Mark Graham using the Archive-IT service of the Internet Archive. They include web captures of the ISKME.org website as well as captures from sites hosted by IGC.org.These web captures are available to the general public.For more information about this collection please feel free to contact Mark via Send Mail
– Remember the hoodies? After Trayvon Martin was killed, people of all races donned them to declare "I am Trayvon Martin." It was well-meaning but off base, writes Eric Liu at Time. The hoodie was irrelevant; it was only Trayvon's race that mattered. Now, in the aftermath of George Zimmerman's trial, Liu is cheered to see a different meme: White people declaring that "I am not Trayvon Martin"—acknowledging that they get all kinds of breaks simply because they're white. It's not so much about empathy as "about owning up to the unequal privilege of being non-black and saying, in essence, 'I Am George Zimmerman,'" writes Liu. "And because I am George Zimmerman, I get to have my fears trump reality. I get get-out-of-jail-free cards. I get a presumption of innocent victimhood, no matter what my own acts or attitudes." Minorities can chafe about the unfairness of the current system, but it won't change until white people step up, and that finally might be happening. "It's become possible to imagine a day when that structure of privilege is dismantled—by white people." Click for Liu's full column.