Perhaps we'd be better served to keep an open mind in order to better understand what happened and hopefully prevent future tragedies.

Zimmerman might be a fool who caused this problem by aggressively chasing and perhaps trying to physically detain Trayvon Martin. But following someone you've reported to the police to see where he went is reasonable and legal. It will happen again in other settings and we should communicate how to avoid a repeat Z-TM tragedy.

Martin may have exacerbated an uncomfortable and perhaps even dangerous situation by deciding to attack Zimmerman to teach him a lesson. Or he may have started out struggling to escape or fighting back, and then just kept pounding Zimmerman when he had the upper hand. If so, Zimmerman's decision to shoot him is a reasonable and legal response. The jury in this case apparently thought so. Since it will likely happen again, we should communicate how to handle it.

So what can we learn from an event when we're not sure exactly what went down? If we back off our established positions on this tragedy, we can assess the various scenarios presented by people who weren't present that night and think about what to teach those who may find themselves in a similar position in the future.

Zimmerman may have profiled Martin based on his age, clothes, race or behavior. But the elephant in the room, as the elderly neighbor mentioned referring to local burglaries, is that as long as crime continues, young men who look or act like those earlier criminals will continue to inspire "pattern matching" alarm responses. This natural human tendency is expressed by dysfunctional stereotyping and racism, but the biological basis of this response is sensible, reasonable and likely unchangeable. To deal with this tendency, we need to be honest about where it comes from and why it persists.

As wrong as it is to teach white children racism, it's also wrong to teach blanket anger and hostility to our youth of color. The vast majority of white people are not racist bigots, and that reality should be reinforced. If Martin made bad decisions that night, and if those decisions were based on a perception of who Zimmerman was (white, gay or even someone profiling him for being black), then his death could have been avoided by his own actions.

In our family, we teach our children that some people are outright racists, especially if they were taught racism as children, while some people are just responding to what they've seen and heard in their lives (experientially learned bias). In areas where many young black men have committed crimes, there will be people who start perceiving black youth as criminals. Until we can recognize and acknowledge where bias comes from, we can't counteract it.