I like every other rational human being find the murder of young Trayvon Martin a tragedy and the demands for justice that have stretched across all racial lines has me more hopeful about the prospects of justice than I have every been. While the faces you see and the voices your hear are authentically African-American I find just as many of my white colleagues disturbed by the situation and just as vocal.
However, the death of young Trayvon gives me pause as I reflect not only on his death, but the countless other young men who die within OUR very own communities that go noticed and unnoticed. For those young men who die in the streets of Jacksonville, Atlanta, Chicago, DC and New York we should be just as outraged as their killers go UNPUNISHED and just as NOTICEABLE. While I feel that justice will prevail in Trayvon’s case as a community we have not been a beacon of accountability when it comes to corporation with authority in terms of solving what amounts to senseless acts of violence perpetrated on our own by our own. Far to often I have seen the faces of countless mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers as they plead for help and information surrounding the death of a love one only to be greeted with a deafening silence in communities that look like them.
Accountability starts at home and while I AM encouraged by our resolve regarding my young brother Trayvon I am just as discouraged by the number of unsolved murders in our own neighborhood. Does getting killed in a gated community at the hands of a white man bring anymore cache’ than getting killed at the hands of a black man in the hood? Both are just as tragic and deserve just as much outrage. However, we have become both complacent and tolerant of those who die on the street where houses are abandoned and poverty is evident.
Trayvon’s death while tragic on many fronts brings to light the history regarding the caviler attitude that seems to exist when it comes to the life of African-American males. George Zimmerman is just the face of the latest to take a life of the aforementioned, but everyday in some major city an African-American male’s loses his life and there is NO outcry for justice or accountability. It’s just business as usual, but the pain and loss is just as real.
I AM 42
An African American Male
A Student
A Friend
A Son
A Brother
I Own A Cell Phone
I Like Skittles
And I AM Trayvon Marshall
That’s my truth and I AM sticking to it….
