I’m sure everyone has heard by now about the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in a gated community in Sanford, Florida. My initial reaction to the story that a “white man” who was patrolling the community had shot an unarmed black “youth”— who was heard to be crying for help in pathetic manner—was the same as most people: revulsion about the results of racial profiling, prejudice and the gun culture. There were white women who lived in the community being interviewed on various television shows, clearly in sympathy with the victim. Martin’s family and supporters claimed that the police—who said that the shooter, George Zimmerman, was acting in self-defense—were suppressing evidence of cold-blooded murder. Photos distributed to the media showed a sullen-looking Zimmerman dressed in prison jumpsuit orange, while the victim appeared to be an innocent, fresh-faced child. Thousands of white and black residents gathered to denounce the shooting, and people started wearing “hoodies” like the victim was wearing as a show of solidarity—even the Miami Heat players posed in hoodies—and the usual publicity-seeking suspects appeared to put in their half-pence. Even President Obama weighed-in, claiming that if he had a son, he would be like Martin. Anyone who said that Zimmerman was anything but a racist murderer was accused of being his “ally” rather than a supporter—implying that they “approved” of the shooting. Zimmerman’s story that he was attacked by Martin was vehemently denied; after all, how could a mere “kid” break an adult male’s nose?
I am neither Zimmerman’s “ally” nor “supporter.” I don’t know the man, and neither do the people demonizing him; although he had one arrest for allegedly striking a police officer, he seems to have had a good job and a stable existence. I do strongly believe that resorting to lethal action should be avoided at all costs, but I also support the truth and despise hypocrisy—and the more I look into this, I see less truth and more hypocrisy coming from the Martin camp and the media. When I saw the photos of the two principle players, I knew there was another dynamic at play. Zimmerman was not “white,” at least not as commonly understood. His father is white, but his mother is Latino, and he could easily pass as a “Mexican” in most people’s eyes; it would be like calling the mixed-race Obama “white.” This is why it is so easy for “real” white people to gang-up with blacks in this matter, because there is a tacit understanding that Zimmerman really wasn’t one of them, and Latinos are the current scapegoat of the day. That was the first thing that struck me as not quite right about this case. I also questioned what I regarded as propaganda images the media was providing the public which seemed to designed to maximize the evil man-angelic kid contrast; Martin was in fact 17-years-old and 6’3” (six inches taller than Zimmerman), while the photos of him the media has released are of a youth much younger and shorter. When I mentioned it in a post on another website, someone directed me to a webpage that showed a different contrast: A smiling Zimmerman dressed in a suit and tie, and Trayvon Martin no longer the angelic youth, but shirtless with pulled-down shorts, a smug facial expression, and showing the viewer gang-style hand signals. My “suspicion” is that the family was asked to provide photos of Martin to the media, but the more recent examples they could supply showed not an innocent “boy,” but someone caught-up in at least the symbolism of gang culture. The best they could do was find five-year-old pictures that did not tell a truthful story of what Martin had become.
There are other things that call into question the innocent, angelic image of Martin. It is true he had no juvenile arrest record, but a lot of youths who have had encounters with the police do not have “official” police records—merely released to a parent who kicks the offender in the ass for embarrassing them when they get a call at work to pick-up their kid. But while we know that Zimmerman worked as a forensic loan review analyst at a mortgage company, what we know of Martin for certain is open to question, a lot of questions that his supporters either don’t want to answer or deny the reality of outright. He was in the midst of a 10-day suspension from school; we don’t know why for absolute certainty, because his parents had his school records sealed. Unless he was something less than a model student, why would they do this? Initially Martin’s parents claimed that their son had been suspended for “tardiness.” This was obviously not true, although it might have been part of a pattern of misbehavior. Others claimed on various Internet postings that Martin had been in trouble for marijuana use and assaulting a basketball coach. On Martin’s now deleted twitter account—where his “handle” was “NO_LIMIT_NIGGA,” which doesn’t exactly sound like someone who wanted to be an airline pilot, let alone a constructive member of society—he was congratulated for trying to assault a bus driver just a few days before the shooting. After the shooting a friend tweeted “DOG I KNOW YU WHOOPED HIS ASS DOE.” On Martin’s Facebook page, at least one friend in a photo greets him with gang signs, and in other posts the urban “lingo” implies that Martin was a marijuana dealer. This is confirmed by the discovery of traces of marijuana that were found in a plastic bag in his school pack, which in fact seems to be the reason for his suspension—contradicting the second “explanation” provided by Martin’s father, “unauthorized entry” on school property. It seems that the further you dig, the more that has to be hidden to maintain the story arch; school records sealed or not, people still talk: Martin had been suspended from school on at least two other occasion, in one case for suspected theft.
But that still leaves us with what exactly happened that night. What is known precisely is that Zimmerman, who was volunteer watch captain in the gated community where he lived, saw Martin walking about, and thought he acted “suspiciously,” peering at each house he passed. What the media doesn’t understand is that Zimmerman had a reason to be suspicious: He had never seen Martin before, and in fact Martin had only just arrived to stay in his father’s girlfriend’s home to sit out his suspension from school. The question of why his mother did not want him in her house where he had been living has not been answered with any specificity. There had also been several robberies in the neighborhood recently; if Zimmerman was paranoid, that goes with the “job.” Anyone who has done security guard work knows the feeling that loiterers who just won’t go away are there to cause “trouble” for them. Zimmerman called the police to report a “suspicious” person on the grounds, and was told by the dispatcher not to follow Martin, but to wait until the police arrived. Apparently Zimmerman did not follow this advice; what the media has told us is that the white female witnesses who have been making the talk show circuit testified to an altercation and shouts, and heard a single shot. One of the witnesses said she saw Zimmerman standing over the victim, and was upset that he didn’t administer CPR. Martin’s girlfriend says that he phoned her to say that someone was following him, which tells us nothing but has been used to “prove” his innocence of any no-good.
But these “witnesses” seem to be playing to the hype. What about Zimmerman’s story? He admits that he followed Martin, but when Martin suddenly disappeared, he got out of his vehicle to look for him; when he could not find him, he was in the process of returning to his vehicle when Martin approached him from behind. Zimmerman said that Martin asked him if he had a "problem," and Zimmerman said no. But at 6'3" Martin likely appeared intimidating and threatening, and Zimmerman reached for his cell phone to call the police--and not his gun. Martin was alleged to have said "Now you have one" and struck Zimmerman in the face. That Zimmerman was attacked by Martin seems to be confirmed by the account given by a witness who would only give his name as “John” and refused to photographed, apparently for fear he would be a target of Martin’s “supporters”—a scenario given bizarre credence by the “New Black Panther Party,” which has issued a “Wanted: Dead or Alive” call for the “capture” of Zimmerman (who also seems to have gone into hiding). This witness says that he saw a man in a red sweater (Zimmerman) on the ground being beaten on by a person who was on top of him, the one wearing a “hoodie.” He says it was the man in red who was looking at him and crying “Help, help, help.” This “John” stated that he warned the person who was engaged in the assault that he was going to call 9-1-1 if he didn’t stop. He does state that soon afterward he looked out a window of his dwelling and saw that the person who had been beating on the man in red was now lying on the ground, and appeared to be dead. When police arrived they likely talked to this witness, and noting the grass stains on Zimmerman’s clothes and the bloody condition of his face—his nose was broken—it wasn’t a stretch to believe that he had acted in “self-defense.” The police did confiscate Zimmerman’s weapon, however.
Martin’s supporters point out that he was unarmed, and they do have a “point.” But the demonization of Zimmerman seems to fly in the face of the knowable facts. No one seems to want to know what those facts are, so that they can use the incident to make a social “statement.” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have made their speeches, the president has weighed-in; frankly, I don’t think he’d be so quick to adopt Martin as his “son” if he knew he wasn’t that sweet-faced kid anymore, but a borderline small-time criminal. When I first saw that the picture of Miami Heat players wearing hoodies in support, I thought it was a group photo of the players involved in the Xavier-Cincinnati BrawlBall incident earlier this season. Do these people really need a lesson in urban “culture?” The wearing of “hoodies” as a deliberate clothing accessory (as well as the pants pulled down your buttocks) has anti-social implications usually associated with gang culture. Frankly, having grown-up in the Seventies I can see now that the “pimp” look showed far more “style” than these classless fashion idiots.
So what have we learned here—or rather, what should we have learned here? First of all, we know—contrary to the media portrayal—that Martin and his friends were no strangers to violence, in fact it was part of their “culture.” We know that criminal activity (drug dealing) was not unknown to Martin. Accepting the fact that shooting a person who is not armed should be the last resort in the face of an assault by said person, the evidence points to the fact that instead of confronting Zimmerman and explaining to him why he was there, Martin chose to physically assault Zimmerman per the dictates of a culture that glorifies violence. Remember that his friend “knows” that Martin is the kind of person who would “whoop” someone like Zimmerman. The testimony of the white women going around in support of Martin simply cannot be trusted in this matter. Of course there is the famous 9-1-1 call that has been used to claim that Martin was heard screaming “help” and Zimmerman using a racial slur; in fact CNN has gone out of its way to employ “experts” to isolate words which they construe to be slurs (anyone who has tried to decipher the closing chant in the Beatles’ “Revolution #9” knows that you can hear whatever you want in it). There can be heard a high-pitched scream, but this cannot be assumed to be Martin, because he wasn’t a “child,” but less than a year away from being an official adult. In fact, Martin's father initially denied that the scream was made by his son, but has since claimed he was misunderstood. As already noted, "John,” who was closest to the “action,” states that it was Zimmerman who screamed to him for help.
So the evidence, if dispassionately examined, would seem to confirm Zimmerman’s story. This tragedy would not have occurred if Zimmerman had simply let things be, but it is wrong for Martin’s supporters to claim that Zimmerman was the “aggressor.” Martin could have simply ignored Zimmerman and gone to the home he was staying in, and allowed Zimmerman to see that at least he was in the neighborhood for a legitimate reason. The more likely scenario is that Martin felt some displeasure that he was being followed, whether he was up to no good or not. Playing a “game” with his pursuer, he deliberately hid himself; when he saw his chance, he ambushed Zimmerman. He was certainly “big” enough to believe he could “take” Zimmerman, and seemed to have the upper hand until Zimmerman pulled out his gun. I don’t believe that one should assume that Zimmerman intended to kill Martin; unlike police who empty their magazines at human targets, Zimmerman fired once, clearly in a moment of feverish “self-defense.”
This case should be decided by due process, not mass hysteria. Such was the case in the worst mass slaying in Indianapolis history, which occurred on the evening of the first day of June, 2006. According to police, two black men armed with an assault rifle and handgun arrived at the house in which dwelled a “Mexican” family. At that time two adults and three children aged 11, 8 and 5 were in the house. The two men forced their way into the house, after which witnesses said that the lights in the house were turned off. Shortly thereafter, two more Latino adults arrived; when they entered the house, one of them was heard to cry out to another person still outside to stay outside. She was seen to be forcibly pulled back into the house. Shots were then heard, and a cry “Not my baby.” After the shooting was over, the two men who had entered the house were seen leaving. When police arrived at the house what they found were seven bodies, all face down, either on the floor—or in the case of the children, on a bed. They were all shot execution style. Shreds of skin and brain were splattered on the floor and walls.
Apparently one of the shooters had a run-in with the another person who lived in the house (but who wasn’t present at the time of the slayings), and jumped at the chance to seek “payback” against the "Mexicans" when told by a friend that there was drugs and money stashed in the house. When they found nothing, the man with the assault rifle went “crazy.” Afterwards, there was no denunciation of the crime by local black leaders, and no Latino activists promised retaliation, and there was hardly any national media attention after the first few hours. But the murderers were found, put on trial, convicted and sentenced to multiple prison terms they are unlikely to live out (at the trial it was admitted that the "friend" who provided the "motive" for the "robbery" had lied). Was it coincidence that this slaying occurred just when anti-Latino immigrant rhetoric was ratcheting-up again? I think not.
But the Indianapolis case bears not the slightest resemblance to the Sanford case—especially in that in the absence of any real evidence of intent to harm by Zimmerman, it is being tried by the court of public opinion, with the media as judge, prosecutor and jury. The media has gone so far in the demon/angel imagery that it would be almost impossible for it do an about-face now and report the truth; to admit to gross error would mean a severe blow to media credibility. From my perspective, the media has already suffered a serious loss of credibility, not just in the way they have reported this story, but the way it has deliberately used propaganda techniques (such as the use of old photographs) to distort reality. The media supporting a mob reaction that is even less interested in an embarrassing truth is both shameful and shameless.
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