The Additional Tragedy of the Trayvon Martin Death

First, I want to make it perfectly clear that I feel that this case should go in front of a grand jury and let them decide what, if any, charges are brought against Zimmerman.  It should not be tried in the court of public opinion. 


The problem is that this case is being tried by the media, the pundits, the race baiters of our country, social media, and around kitchen tables all over America.  It is really criminal that this boy's death is being used in this way.  There are people with an agenda that are making statements that may very well have no basis in fact.  


The police have released very little information on the evidence that they have on the case.  Maybe because they did a awful job investigating it or just maybe because they are doing a better job than people are willing to admit and are making sure that they are covering every base.  It isn't all that unusual for it to take time for charges to brought against someone.  Police have to build a case that they believe will hold up in court.  


We also can look at the photos that are being used.  Below is the photos that media are using.  Photos that are old and paint a picture that they want to paint.  

They are using pictures of Tayvon that are old and make him appear much younger than his 17 years.  They are using an old mug shot of Zimmerman that is a close up picture of his face that makes him look much bigger than the picture to the right of it.  Media narrative.  The facebook picture of Trayvon clearly shows that he was much bigger than what the media would like you to believe and that Zimmerman isn't as big as they want you to believe.  


In Chicago there was a march to honor the life of Trayvon.  But there was barely a mention of the people who were killed by gang violence in a city that has been overrun by gang related crime and deaths this year.  57 children have lost their lives since the beginning of the school year.  The majority of them were gang related.  Are those children's lives less valuable?  Don't their parents want justice too?  


We have movie director and producer Spike Lee tweeting out Zimmerman's home address, not just once, but twice.  He have Al Sharpton involving himself in this crime.  We have Jesse Jackson saying that black men are under attack.  On this point we sort of agree:

While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed were African Americans. 

Shouldn't we be just at outraged about these murder victims as well?  


It isn't that anyone is saying that Jayvon's death isn't a tragedy.  It is.  No parent should bury a child, ever, under any circumstances.  It goes against the nature of things.  My only point being we need to examine why this particular crime is getting so much attention and how the media is creating a narrative that may or may not be based on facts.   George Zimmerman has been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Not only as a murderer, but a racist as well.  The evidence of that is quite lacking.  


Black parents have some worries that others do not.  They have to talk to their sons in a way that their white counterparts do not.  Racism exists in this country.  That cannot be denied.  But not every crime  that have people of different colors involved is about racism.  It just isn't.  The above stat proves that.  Only 7.9% of black murders are even committed by someone of another race. These numbers may not be comfortable for people like Jackson, Sharpton, and Lee to look at, but it doesn't make them less true.  


We have to decide as a society if black murder victims are only cared about when they are killed by someone who is not black.  It is about time we have the difficult discussions and broach the topics of why the numbers are so skewed.  Until we talk about the real issues, the problems will never be solved, 


I know that I view the police differently than many in the black community do.  I trust the police for the most part.  There are bad apples of course, but by and large they do their dangerous jobs well.  Many in black communities have a very different view of the police.  But I do feel that is more socio-economic related than race related.  I think that distrust of the police is just more prevalent in poorer communities were crime rates are higher than they are in lower crime rate areas. I have had very few run-ins with the police in my life.  So from my vantage point they are doing their job keeping criminals away from my property.  When you live in a high crime area you are going to see police more often.  You will see people getting arrested more.  You may even feel hassled if they question you because there was a crime in your neighborhood, you will also know more victims of violent crimes and you will know more people who have spent time in jail.  You wonder why they are not doing more about the gangs, the drugs, and whatever else is more of a daily occurrence in your neighborhood than what happens in mine.  Those are the biases that people from my vantage point and  people from other vantage points bring with them when they look at this case.  It isn't about racism, it is about human nature.  We look at the world from what we have experienced and seen for ourselves.  


Read here What if Trayvon Martin were white.  A true story of white teen killed by a black shooter.  A different state with different gun laws.  There is an agenda to why this story is getting the attention that it is.