What happens "After Trayvon"? Current rhetoric of denial suggests more of the same

I was sitting in the lobby of  a dentist’s office when I observed a recent issue of TIME magazine on a table. “After Trayvon” it asks rhetorically. If it is a question, the answer is that we’ve been asking a variation of this question for fifty years. In 1961 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question to a church congregation in St. Louis:

Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58 percent of its crimes? We’ve got to face that. And we’ve got to do something about our moral standards…We know that there are many things wrong in the white world, but there are many things wrong in the black world, too. We can’t keep on blaming the white man. There are things we must do for ourselves.

If Dr. King knew Trayvon Martin and the criminal-in-training that he was—despite the fact that Martin had the benefit of a comfortable middle class existence—he would almost certainly condemn his “moral” standards and “content of character.” He would certainly point to Martin—who had a choice, and chose to be a “gangsta”—as an example of what is wrong, not right.

The TIME article contained commentary from people unable to look reality in the face, still searching for scapegoats. What happens “After Trayvon”? There will be those who have achieved success and will be self-righteous and continue to decry the “racism” that somehow was not so great an impediment to prevent their success. Not that it still doesn’t exist; there are still some whites who only believe in those who they share “commonality” with, and do not trust “strangers” who are only known to them by the stereotypes they hold. 

But what cannot be denied is that young black males continue to murder each other at rates far in excessive of any other demographic (including Latinos). That will continue “After Trayvon.” Far higher rates of theft, robbery, assault and other crimes will continue “After Trayvon.” High drop-out rates in school will continue “After Trayvon.” 

Why will these things continue “After Trayvon”? Partly because of the lack of reliable work in urban areas, but mostly because some people will continue to search for scapegoats (like the Latino George Zimmerman), and attempt to concoct self-serving personal rationalizations to explain away the behavior that Dr. King decried 50 years after. All the advocates and activists can muse is if Dr. King were alive today, would he wear a “hoody?”