I've been following the Trayvon Martin case for over 2 weeks now. I first became aware of it all when my Twitter feed began to slowly show more and more instances of Martin's name. I finally decided to figure out what all was going on. From everything I read, the events on February 26th went like this: Martin, an unarmed teen, walked to a convenience store to buy skittles and ice tea. George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchmen, then racially targeted Martin, pursued him, engaged him in an altercation, and shot and killed him. Because of Florida's "
Stand Your Ground" law, Zimmerman has not been charged. With anything. At all.
Almost everyone I talked with about the case agreed that this sounded atrocious. I mean, who could not become outraged hearing this?
At that point, the voices talking about the case were mostly limited to social media, people interested in social justice, and Martin's friends and family. But eventually, the bigger news outlets could no longer ignore what was happening and they began to cover the story as well. ABC News has a good rundown of the
timeline of events.
So of course, as the ugliness of racism in America has another name and face, more racism is popping up in an attempt to obscure the facts of the case. I'm really uncomfortable with the "token black friend" in movies and TV shows, so of course, when the media provides us with Zimmerman's
black friend to come to his defense, I can't help but cringe a little. And then there was
Geraldo Rivera's comments about how hoodies are really the reason Martin was shot.
It's all pretty despicable, but by far the most offensive voice I've seen in this discussion is
Dan Linehan at Wagist, which I discovered from
scATX's Twitter. The title of Linehan's piece is "Was Trayvon Martin a Drug Dealer?" In it Linehan posits that Martin's family has been selling the media a depiction of the teen which is much more fresh-faced and innocent than Martin really was.
I don't typically make it my business to respond to every bigot with a computer and a blog, but I feel that I really must make the point that Linehan--and anyone else who might try to use this argument--is plainly wrong.