Let Trayvon Martin Go in Peace

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin stepped into a convenience store to buy a snack. On the way out, neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, whose legal identity is Hispanic despite his German name, reported Martin to the police as a suspicious character, then accosted the boy, and then got into a fight with him. Martin was big enough to be dangerous, and did enough damage to provoke Zimmerman to pull out a gun. End of the instructive story: If you don't want to be shot, it is a good idea not to pound people's heads on the pavement.

The story was reported--deliberately, it now appears, misreported--to suggest that Zimmerman just saw a large, dark figure and fired on it. Trigger-happy. There are those who want us to believe that being in the vicinity of a loaded gun causes people to mistake any large, dark figure for one of those human-shaped cardboard silhouettes used as targets in some "self-defense" courses. The only problem with that version of the story is that it happens not to be true.

Once again, Al Sharpton, who leaped in with both feet when Tawana Brawley apparently faked a gang-style attack to cover up evidence of a little teenaged indiscretion, has rushed to back the wrong side because the person at fault happens to be African-American.

Those who would like to reopen the color wars of my childhood certainly circulated plenty of sympathetic material, deliberately referring to Trayvon Martin by his first name only and using other strategies to make news readers/viewers who remember the color wars feel that he could have been our son, brother, buddy, favorite student, or younger self. However, the fact is that most of our sons, brothers, etc., on realizing that a nervous adult had already reported them as suspicious characters, would have had enough sense to do everything they could to seem as un-suspicious and un-threatening as possible. Which would not have included bashing the nervous adult's head against the pavement.

Nevertheless, as Bryan Nash reports, no matter how much sympathy Martin has lost with the thinking public, those who react to emotion alone still want to treat Martin's death as a hatecrime:

http://personalliberty.com/2012/05/14/new-black-panther-party-wants-to-hang-zimmerman/?eiid=

Much as I hate to say it...fomenting anything resembling color wars in the United States really is a hatecrime. And once again, as this web site noted in March, I remind readers that in our cities today everybody is wary of young men, without necessarily even being able to see what color their faces are.

Nothing good is likely to come from treating this tragic incident as the hatecrime it wasn't. What is likely to happen? Stephen Flurry, at the Philadelphia Trumpet (yes, it's a Christian denominational magazine), has an informative analysis:

http://www.thetrumpet.com/9273.0.144.0/society/race/race-to-war

Once again, this web site advises all readers, of whatever color: Love all--don't be manipulated by stupid prejudices. Trust few--don't give anyone the power to dictate your judgments or reactions without analyzing the situation for yourself.

So far as Barack Obama's known life history can be taken as evidence, a race war is the very last thing our President has ever wanted. A race war is, in fact, what he's spent his life trying to prevent, among his own personal relatives or anywhere else. A race war is also what we elected him President as the living symbol of our desire to avoid.

Don't let a few idiots manipulate the rest of us, particularly including President Obama, into the thing we most want to avoid. Make a memorial donation in honor of Trayvon Martin and let his family mourn in peace. The life you save just might be your own.