You might think me racist

Ok, here is the deal, I have been sitting here for the past few days debating on whether I would want to write this blog or not due to the sensitive nature of the subject.  That being said I have also thought that it is a direct injustice to not voice an opinion in a nation where freedom to do so is paramount.  So here goes nothing, or everything depending on where you are standing.

Trayvon Martin has been on the lips, minds and hearts of every person from every walk of life for a moment now.  And I do not disagree with this.  My thoughts and prayers go to  his family in this certainly horrible time.  I pray that truth and justice are served in this incident, and I have to have faith that it will.  As I sit here drinking my coffee, writing this blog, I cannot begin to wrap my head around losing one of my children.  I like mostly everyone else who isn't currently dwelling under a rock have read at least a portion of the story or timeline, or saw the news blips.  I am not writing this to talk about gun control, the Castle doctrine, or anything involving the "right" or "left" way of thinking.  I consider myself a conservative, but for the direction of this blog that should have no bearing on what I want to say.

I suppose we can really start the meat and potatoes of this blog with a question.  Why is Trayvon Martin important?   Or better phrased, why is the case of Trayvon Martin important or relevant?  Quick everybody look! Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton just lost their minds at those last two questions!

What I am really getting at is this specifically.  Since reading about this incident, social and traditional media has exploded in theories and opinions.  None of them particularly bright or even helpful for that matter.  I took to the world wide web in search of information about the incident.  Then quickly became disgusted with myself.  I wanted to look up and become more educated on a tragedy.  I didn't necessarily want to try and help in the matter, more to the end that I had a macabre and insatiable appetite for the information.  About one child.  Then I began to feel heavily the truth of what I was experiencing.  I felt awful for this kid and his family, which I still do, but not because it was right to feel that way, but rather because the media MADE me feel that way.  I saw a black kid murdered, and the race baiters and popular opinion told me to feel badly about it.  Told you that you might think I was racist.

But here is the rub.  Upon further thinking of the matter I AM sad.  I DO feel terrible about this incident.  But unlike before, I don't feel bad because it was a black kid killed, I feel badly because it was a KID killed.  The senseless loss of a life is tragic enough let alone a life cut so short because it belonged to a young person.  So it got me thinking, why Trayvon Martin?  I agree completely his name should be out there, and his story told, but there are COUNTLESS others whose stories we have never heard, nor will we ever hear.  Not unless we go looking for them ourselves.  Is it because he is black?  I thought we were a more forward thinking society than that, so that can't be the issue.  Is it his age? 17 if I am not mistaken right?  No I see nothing their either.  WHAT MAKES HIM SO DAMNED IMPORTANT?  Why are we as society looking at this more closely than many many others that have come before him?  Jesse Jackson can you answer this?  Maybe you good Reverend Al?   I refuse to make this case important solely because Trayvon was black, or because the media who has portrayed him as an 8-12 year old through pictures, tells me to.  To me that is racist itself.

Racism is defined by Webster's as : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.  This could go either way if you ask me.  If I believe I am superior because of my color, then I fit this definition.  HOWEVER, if I place more importance on someone ELSE because of the color of their skin then there again, I fit this definition!  

I am not claiming to have the answers, I am not some hyper intelligent Liberal, or for that matter Conservative.  What I am saying is that our values are askew.  We have come to accept what the media feeds us as fact, letting our own values and beliefs fall by the wayside.  We give into what we are told, not what we have learned for ourselves.  That inherently leaves us prey to the pitfalls of being mindless drones,  blindly following a media, or Government to that end, into whatever the "others" see fit.  Be it what we give a damn about socially, or mainstream media attempting to ignite a race war.  


"If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."  Martin Luther King Jr.