For many of us, the Trayvon Martin story has been hard to swallow. For the uninformed, the story consists of George Zimmerman, the captain of the neighborhood watch in Sanford, Florida shooting an unarmed Trayvon Martin the night of February 26th, 20121. He remains free for this act.
Free, you ask? He did it under the auspices of the Stand Your Ground2 law, a piece of legislation that allows those who are feeling threatened to “use whatever force necessary” in order to end the situation. This includes deadly force; effectively giving those who haven’t been trained in its discretion the choice in if someone lives or dies.
In order to make sure people aren’t killing each other in the streets, there is a clause in the law for those who do shoot to prove their life is in danger. However, it has been noted in the state of Florida that just doesn’t happen3, with people usually walking after a slap on the wrist, after people saying they were “attacked”. The lack of Jurisprudence and with due diligence, mixed with the growth of social media as less useless chatter and more social justice device4 has led us down this road where a case would get the nation’s attention.
That case happened to arrive when Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin for being suspicious. Like most cases like this, there was a high probability that after a few days, this would be swept under the rug. However, unlike most stories, social media allowed us to put a face with a name. You saw his eyes, the eyes of a child. How could he be suspicious?
It began to get worse as details developed about Trayvon from that night. He was there because his father lived down the street, running an errand for his little brother. Who he was started to emerge as well, an honor roll student who majored in cheeriness5. He was becoming less dead black suspicious teenager to dead teenager.
It got bad when the story on Zimmerman appeared. He was an overzealous neighborhood watch captain whose arrest record had been purged7. He had a history of anger8. His 911 call was laced with anger and racial epithets9.
It got uglier when we learned of the handling of the case by the Sanford police. They took Zimmerman’s statements as fact. They didn’t drug test him after the shooting. They denied a detective who called for manslaughter and quelled evidence. All of this didn’t help when it is wrapped up with a culture of racism hanging around the offices of the police station10.
This created a perfect storm when mixed with a constant presence of Twitter and Facebook for calls of justice, culminating with rallies in major cities with those of all races in hoodies seeking awareness and calling for the arrest of Zimmerman. This caused the Federal Government to step in, bring in the FBI to research both Zimmerman and the police department, and threaten to hand down violations of civil rights11.
With even President Obama handing down a statement12, there was a clarion call for justice. Everything was perfect, so perfect; even right wing commentators were staying away from Zimmerman and his right to carry. Except one thing could have thrown the case on its side and created a firestorm of doubt.
Pictures of Trayvon Martin started to surface. They were images of him with gold teeth. People claimed to have a Twitter where the word “nigga” was in his twitter name. Reports of him smoking weed came out. All of a sudden, he was less angel and more “thug”. He started fitting into the mold that post racist America wanted him to be, that is, just enough for him to sweep him under the rug.
With perfection shattered, you started to notice a change in support. People started to take the hoodie pictures down. You noticed the less sharing done on social networks. The tension seemed to slow down as people started to retweet those pictures viewed as bad, prepping statements on how he could have posed a threat that night. Everything started to become questioned. People forgetting that it was Zimmerman in the car with the gun, the police fudged up the evidence or that Zimmerman had nearly 100 pounds on Trayvon.
Shame, as those pictures reportedly came from Stormfront. Interesting how far people will reach in order to create some sanity in their own heads.
This would have been a perfect litmus test to see how far we have come. The truth of the matter is no matter what pictures, drugs, or conjecture you can create, there is no such thing as “come shoot me clothes” 13. In an odd way, we really missed an opportunity to truly explore race in this country when the lines are a bit more muddled. Things get a lot more “complicated” when things are less Michael Jordan and more Allen Iverson, but presentation didn’t change the fact they were both dominant basketball players, and if we are truly moving towards this post racial America, then presentation shouldn’t change the fact that Trayvon was murdered that night.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law
3 http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-03-26/stand-your-ground-trayvon-zimmerman/53795046/1
4 Google Arab Spring. Twitter and Facebook can do more than you think
5 http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-tragedy-of-trayvon-martin/?mobile=nc
6 http://www.sacbee.com/2012/03/28/4372660/michael-smerconish-analyzing-911.html
7 http://rollingout.com/culture/george-zimmerman-son-of-a-retired-judge-has-3-closed-arrests/
8 http://rollingout.com/culture/george-zimmerman-son-of-a-retired-judge-has-3-closed-arrests/ !!!!
9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNI5CA5jijw
10 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-usa-florida-racismbre82r0sn-20120328,0,4024180.story
11 Reminiscent of the 1960’s. Interesting, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
12 http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/22/2712531/at-rally-this-couldve-been-my.html
13 Thanks Charles M Blow for this nugget @CharlesMBlow
From the desk of Adam Thomas 