Everyday Black Matters
While I believe the shooting of Trayvon Martin is a tragedy and is racked with issues of profiling and injustice, another injustice is the fact that the media is presenting this story as a simple black vs. white issue. This is an injustice to the audience. We are being misled to buy into a sort of propaganda. If one takes a simple Google image search of the two mens names you will see very few images of the perpetrator.
As Nightline ran the story of the protest happening in support of Trayvon Martin the words BLACK TEENAGER and WHITE NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH CAPTAIN were used to describe the two individuals at the center of this heart wrenching story. This is not a coincidence. It is not a coincidence that Black and White leads the discussion in most news outlets and blog posts since this story broke three weeks ago.
The Role of the Media in Trayvon’s story
The job of the media is to get the story into the headlines. No, I am not saying that it does not deserve to be in the headlines, but the problem is the way that it is being pushed. There is a two part narrative in this story that it seems is not being challenged. The first part “Black teen dressed in a hoodie is assumed to be dangerous” the second part “shooter had to have been a racist white person.” These narratives definitely ring true in our world but do they really ring true in this situation? Is this really about ONE WHITE MAN’S FEAR OF THE BLACK MALE? I believe the answer to this question is no– it is no. But in order for the story to gain momentum it must be codified in this way.
Is The Media Manipulating Trayvon’s Story?
The media is using the story to reinforce the narrative of white hatred and fear toward blacks—specifically black men. We live in the United States and our country was built on European Colonial powers with racist ideas about people of color. BUT does Zimmerman fit into the category of a person of color? Even if we don’t KNOW George Zimmerman’s race/ethnicity not seeing his face (or at least not seeing it often) makes us simply assume he is white based on his name. Beyond that, the two seconds we see his face are minimal compared to the number of times Zimmerman is described SPECIFICALLY as a white man. MOST Americans if we were honest would not describe Zimmerman as phenotipically white. Even George Zimmerman’s father described him as a ”Spanish speaking minority” in a letter to Orlando Sentinel.
What this says to me is that without the narrative of “White racist kills Black teen in self-defense” this story is not news. That breaks my heart in ways that are unimaginable. Trayvon’s story matters. Finding out the truth matters, even if the truth is that he was killed by another ethnic minority. Our society is sick with the disease of racism. We are being led to think it lives in the hearts of vigilante neighborhood watch captains, angry commenter’s on Fox news posts, conservatives, police—but only if they are WHITE. I submit that the disease of racial prejudice is a virus that all of US White, Black, Asian, Native American, Arab-American, Latino [and every other racial/ethnic group you can have the pleasure of seeing in this great nation] have been exposed to and infected with. It does not care what our background is. It is a sickness that if left un-treated in all of us will become FULL BLOWN RACISM. Trayvon lost his life, and Zimmerman pulled the trigger. We all believe that.
Moving Forward
I challenge each of us not to allow the media to reduce this down to WHITE RACIST MAN KILLS BLACK MALE TEEN. There are so many more complexities to the real events. Each of us needs to ask “What about our society makes this ok?” “What ideas have we accepted that would allow this to happen?” “Where do those ideas come from?” “Why does the media want you to believe that Zimmerman is white?” “What would the story have said about Zimmerman if Trayvon was a white teen?” “Where does the fear of a black man come from?” “Have we shared Zimmerman’s ideas and just not acted on them—or only locked our car doors and clutched our bags a little tighter?”
I am not defending Zimmerman’s actions—or the actions of the police, prosecutors and other “authority figures” in this tragic story. I want to communicate that the media is playing a sort of bait and switch with us by saying Zimmerman is a white man who killed and unarmed Black teen. Media is playing on our sense of collective understanding and potential outrage of White racism toward Black people, when in fact in this story there are layers of racism–both individual, and institutional racism– that are much more complex. My heart goes out to this family who has lost their son, and suffered injustice after injustice in the wake of his shooting. My heart is both angry and saddened for a man who may have truly believed he was “threatened”; yet the threat was an illusion created by the very real racist ideas that we are absorbing everyday of our lives living in American. My critical eye is calling the media out and saying TELL THE WHOLE STORY in its obvious complexity!
What are your thoughts about how the media is handling Trayvon’s murder?
Written by: Patrice Washington (My friend & former colleague)!
Follower of Christ, devoted wife and mother. I am an alumnus of Western Michigan University where I received my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree in Organizational Communication. I am a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, and I am currently pursuing a post-baccalaureate Secondary teaching certification to teach Language, Literature, and writing along with communications, media, and theatre arts.
For further reading:
White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious like Trayvon Martin!
Lament for Trayvon Martin and black boys EVERYwhere. (by another friend & former IV colleague, Lisa Sharon Harper).
Under suspicion (of being a black man, in general): the killing of Trayvon Martin
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