The testimony of 19-year-old African-American Rachel Jeantel has dominated news coverage the last two days, but the tone has been largely critical of the witness that could make or break the Zimmerman murder trial.

Trayvon Martin told friend, Rachel Jeantel, that a "creepy-ass cracker" was watching him just before that man, George Zimmerman, shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin to set in motion a case that's polarized much of America along racial lines.

When Jeantel took the witness stand on Wednesday and Thursday this week in the murder trial of George Zimmerman, her testimony has been relegated to "hood speak," by a number of national outlets.

Zimmerman, as most of the country knows, stands accused of second degree murder in the Florida shooting death of Trayvon Martin while on patrol as a neighborhood watch volunteer.

Jeantel, a self-described friend of Martin's, testified that "He told me the man kept following him."

Jeantel then told Martin to run home, but he said he was almost there. Here are Rachel Jeantel's words:

"I say, 'Trayvon,' and then he said, 'Why are you following me for? And then I heard a hard-breathing man come say, 'What you doing around here?' ... And then I was calling, 'Trayvon, Trayvon.' And then I started to hear a little bit of Trayvon saying, 'Get off, get off.'"

Jeantel was close to tears as she recounted what happened to her friend.

But on cross-examination, Zimmerman's defense attorney Don West, called her credibility into question, and it might have kept Zimmerman from a guilty verdict.

West asked why she hadn't contacted the police after the phone call. To which Jeantel replied, "I thought he was going to be OK because he was right by his daddy's house, but his daddy was not home."

Tracey Martin did eventually call Jeantel once she was discovered in Trayvon's phone log. She said she expected to be contacted by law enforcement.

But none did, it appears, until the Florida Department of Law Enforcement contacted her much later.

West also moved to impeach Jeantel after he concluded that she lied under oath about visiting Trayvon's body at the hospital.

"Under oath, you created a lie and said you went to hospital?" asked West.

"Yes," responded Jeantel.

Rachel Jeantel then said she lied because she didn't want to see Trayvon's body lying prostrate and dead.

She became much more unnerved during her testimony yesterday and ended her Wednesday in court scoffing at the notion she'd have to continue on Thursday.

As Time—and other outlets—have mentioned, her performance led a lot of people to criticize her speech patterns and her inability to be concise when under a tough cross-examination.

Wrote Time's John McWhorter today:

"Let’s face it, none of us would want to be Trayvon Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel in the last couple of days. Much of the country is laughing at the “ghetto” black girl who keeps getting tripped up in her story. But Jeantel has made a lot more sense than it may have seemed."

It seems that race is again playing a part in the court room spectacle that's been made of George Zimmerman's murder trial, but this time it's those testifying on Trayvon Martin's behalf who are being unfairly categorized due to circumstances (poverty, education etc.) beyond their control.