Obama: "If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different." Maybe not...
After months of wall-to-wall coverage of the George Zimmerman trial and the not-guilty of manslaughter verdict he received in the killing of Trayvon Martin, the dozens of black faces the media found to circumnavigate the minefield that is “black sentiment,” and the organization of rallies nationwide by activists to protest that verdict and indict the United States again as one of the most racist nations on the planet, President Obama decided to add his voice to the dialogue.
And, of course, some people loved what they heard.
When it comes to the series of events that happened on that night in Sanford, Florida, we only have the testimony of George Zimmerman and the opinions of those who don’t believe that’s the way things really went down.
The Trayvon Martin killing was a tragedy and young black men being shot and killed on the streets of America is sadly nothing new, but that’s not how the media saw it. If I may give my opinion of how things went down, I believe when the story first appeared on the media radar, they saw a black kid being shot and killed by a man named “Zimmerman.”
Not exactly a name that implies an ethnicity of color.
So as early as late March of 2012, the media (most notably the New York Times), began referring to George Zimmerman as a newly-created ethnicity: the “white Hispanic,” which gave the story the sex appeal and staying power they wanted, without their fully thinking through the possible ramifications on the lives of the people affected, and those who could be affected later.
We had the investigation, the trial, the verdict, and after all was said and done, the president added an additional caveat: had the situation been reversed, the verdict would have been different.
MRCTV doesn’t have the resources of an NBC, CBS, ABC, or CNN, but you would tend to think that if such an assertion were made, they could find just one example of the Martin-Zimmerman situation in reverse.
It took me less than 30 seconds to find the 2009 clip of the acquittal of a black man, charged with manslaughter, who gunned down a white teen he thought was about to attack him.
I don’t recall seeing angry white people calling on the Department of Justice to file civil rights charges against Roderick Scott, and I certainly don’t remember this receiving the soap opera-like coverage on major news networks. I suspect this didn’t rise to the fever pitch in the media because this tragedy didn’t fit their poor-blacks-are-always-victims narrative, and even black people would laugh at Chris Matthews if he tried to apologize for all of them.
All violent crime is tragic, including the crime the media chooses to ignore. It’s the job of the media to report the news, not incite it. And if there are those who do wish to exploit tragedy, do some homework first so you don’t look the fool.
