Today, many of our hearts are still raw from the tragic verdict that set a killer free. An unarmed child only two years out of puberty: a son, a friend, a nephew and a brother by the name of Trayvon Benjamin Martin was murdered for being young, hooded and black. Our minds are not able to conceive the weight of grief that is upon the shoulders of the Martin family. However, despite the unbearable grief and justifiable anger, which they may feel, Trayvon’s family members have carried themselves with the utmost dignity throughout this entire ordeal. Parents should never outlive their children. They should never have to endure the pain deposited by the doubly cruel specter of perpetuity. Never in their darkest musings did Trayvon’s parents dream that their son would be gunned down for carrying a lethal bag of candy.Today we are shocked, dazed and confused by the implausible verdict of the jury, the poor performance of the prosecutor and the misdirection tactics of the defense. 

The unfortunate reality is that Trayvon was murdered twice. Once on that fateful night in February 2012, and then again across the airwaves as this young man was assassinated by media outlets, pundits, bloggers and right-wing activists seeking to ignite the latent fires of America’s racialized imagination and past. The trial was about murder, gun violence and Stand Your Ground, however, as much as the privileged want to deny it, it was also about race. What we witnessed were the results of a black boy encountering a person whose mind was infected with racial sensibilities, which defined a black child walking in his neighborhood as a threat, a thug, a deviant and a miscreant who was up to no good. Read more…