Headline news for the past few weeks have focused on covering George Zimmerman’s trial for the deadly shooting of Trayvon Martin. It’s astounding how much airtime was given to his trial. It’s been decades since a trial like this has had such national attention, so it’s apparent to see why this trial has received so much media attention.
Involving the killing of an African-American, the calendar rewinds about 50 years and we find the trial seeming to take place amid the peak of the civil rights movement in a racially torn apart America. And with the entire nation watching, it is assumed this was an attack led by racial discrimination.
However, this is not an attack on the black community, rather an attack from the black community. Initial investigation by first responders and on-the-scene police came to the conclusion that Zimmerman acted out of self-defense and therefore no charges were pressed.
But in response, angry protesters, who did not seek justice and instead sought revenge, piled claims of racially discriminative motives and coerced the prosecution of Zimmerman. This case should not have been coerced upon Zimmerman to satisfy the demands of those who could not see the situation for what it actually was.
Protesters who asked for Zimmerman’s prosecution claim he was taking the law into his own hands and acting as some sort of “vigilante Batman” for his neighborhood. But what they also fail to see is in doing this, they too are taking the law into their own hands and acting as vigilantes. And all this on the basis that Martin was singled out for attack solely because he was black. Regardless of his ethnic makeup, Martin was approached for suspicious activity in a neighborhood already undergoing recent break-ins and robberies.
When I was Martin’s age, I too could be found wandering around in the late hours of the night doing anything to get out of the house — sometimes for no reason at all, but also for the intent of getting into a little trouble.
And, I too was often stopped by police officers to make sure I was old enough to be out past curfew and to make sure I wasn’t up to any trouble. I don’t blame Zimmerman at all for thinking Martin looked suspicious.
The fact Martin was an African-American immediately threw the case into the realm of racial conflict, and protesters seeking prosecution did their best to paint this as a hate crime against the black community.
At this point in American history, it is hard to believe racial conflict is still a prominent issue facing modern society. But this isn’t 1960 anymore, and we have progressed so much since the start of the civil rights movement.
This case shouldn’t be as big of an issue as the media has made it out to be and this is the source of my disappointment in media today. Major news groups such as Fox, CNN and MSNBC have created this case, given its vast amounts of airtime and turned it into a major racial issue.
Instead of bringing an issue to light and providing information for awareness, protesters and major news outlets have instead fueled the fire to make Zimmerman look like some kind of racist and Martin to be an innocent victim of discrimination.
If the tables had turned and Martin had killed Zimmerman, it’d be hard to determine if the same protesters would be pursuing persecution or seeking justice for Martin — at least not to this magnitude. Zimmerman would just be another number in a statistic of crime and violence in America.
“If you trusted the justice system to find a man guilty, you must trust it when it finds a man not guilty, or its just partiality you seek,” Bryan Peterson said July 14 via Twitter. These wise words from the Miami Marlins outfielder shows exactly how the trial should be viewed with respect to the verdict found by the jury.
However, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and protesters who called for federal civil rights charges against Zimmerman soon after the jury acquitted him of charges still refuse to halt their attacks on Zimmerman even after President Barack Obama called for peace in respect to the Martin family.
The law is the law and Zimmerman acted out of self-defense. Instead of mocking the final verdict of the jury, people should respect the court’s decision and be thankful that an innocent man was not wrongfully imprisoned.
However, I do feel sympathy for the Martin family and their loss, and also for Zimmerman and his family for the hardship endured throughout the trial and in the future as he must try to resume his life as a labeled murderer by protesters and the prosecution.