By now everyone and their brother has probably read something or the other about the Trayvon Martin case online, and everyone and their brother has probably also commented on the case. It’s not surprising that people would have strong opinions about a case like this, but it does surprise me to read exactly what they’re saying.
Whenever I see a case as head-smackingly obvious as this one, there really is only one conclusion: guilty. An armed man shot an unarmed kid for seemingly no good reason, and has lied multiple times about the events around it. His defense was that Trayvon attacked him, but it’s been proven that Martin got nowhere near him. Then his only defense now is feeling “threatened” by an unarmed kid holding a pack of Skittles but being in no real danger isn’t reason at all. You can’t use “threatened” as a self-defense logic because that could apply to any non-premediated murder. “I felt threatened by this guy at a bar, so I shot him.” “I felt threatened by this guy walking towards me in a parking lot, so I shot him.” “I felt threatened by a commenter on the internet, so I drove to his house and shot him.” It’s ridiculous…
But what’s really ridiculous is the number of people online defending George Zimmerman, not Trayvon Martin. Sure, to be fair, Trayvon has plenty of defenders in the media, but that’s pretty much the only appropriate response since he’s the victim. Trayvon is a dead teenager who had his whole life ahead of him and George Zimmerman is an angry racist who hasn’t even been arrested, so it’s pretty hard to feel sorry for Zimmerman. [You could also argue that he had no business being a Neighborhood Watchman or a licensed gun carrier since his assault charge on a cop and anger issues.]
AND YET, internet commenters don’t seem to see it that way. The “moderate” comments seem to range from “Let’s wait until all the facts are in before we rush to judgment” to “We shouldn’t try people in the court of public opinion…something Obama should know better than,” which is utter bullshit disguised as being reasonable.
Then there are tougher comments still about “Trayvon’s family just wanting money” or mentioning something about Trayvon getting dismissed from school for a trace amount of marijuana in his backpack (but NOT mentioning Zimmerman’s assault on a cop arrest because that doesn’t fit the narrative of “black thug vs. clean vigilante”). But even those flat-out character assassinations aren’t as bad as all of the illiterate rants about “Al Sharkton and Jesse Joke just tryin’ to stir up more shit for the cameras, whur r dey when black gang members kill white peeple?”
We now live in a world where it seems to be almost impossible to talk about something bad being done to a black person without immediate, knee-jerk reactions against even acknowledging the reality of that. You can’t say Trayvon Martin is an innocent victim without hearing “this is just more liberal media stirring up racial problems,” even as someone attacks Obama in the very next breathe. [Don’t even mention that Obama is hated for being black and powerful without bracing yourself for an explosive backlash of denial.]
It’s a country where the largely-exaggerated or downright made-up phenomenon of “reverse racism” is seen as more of a problem than actual racism. Where a black family cannot ask for justice against a killer and an incompetent police department that refuses to prosecute that killer without it spiraling into a partisan nightmare.
There shouldn’t be division on this because there isn’t “two sides” to it. A man killed a boy in a straightforward manslaughter or second-degree murder, and there is no way in the world to justify why he hasn’t even been arrested. [If he gets sentenced to ten years and is on parole/probation after five, I’ll accept that, but not even a court hearing?] And the loathsome internet comment’s section (which never met a person they didn’t hate, where it’s a hundred times easier to attack someone than defend them) should get that. This is one case where a little bit of judgement is required…but NOT in the victim’s direction.