(This was originally published in April, 2012, a couple of months after Trayvon Martin’s death).
Is the Trayvon Martin case something that is being discussed in your classrooms, your offices, or in your homes?
I have been paying a lot of attention to this story, for several reasons, including that Sanford, Florida is my hometown. Or the closest thing I’ve had to a hometown. I moved quite a bit in my life, my parents moved a lot, most of the times it was the Department of Defense’s decision. Sanford was the only place that my destination they chose themselves.
I wasn’t in Sanford all that long. I went to Crooms Academy (the former “Separate But Equal” HS for the county) for 9th grade and Seminole for the remainder of high school. I lived there again, for short time after college. Then lived in other Florida cities afterward until I left the state for good in my late 2os. Though I got back to Sanford fairly often while my father was still alive (my mother had died many years prior), so it felt something like a hometown.
Sanford has a history of racism, that is a fact. Crooms had been the Black high school, and Seminole the White high school until 1970—SIXTEEN years after US Supreme Court ruled that segregated school were unconstitutional. Jim Crow was a tough son-of-a-bitch to kill in Sanford, because that was Sanford’s choice.
However, claims that there were—or weren’t— racial motivations that led to the young man’s death by a neighborhood watch captain is opinion.
I learned the difference between fact and opinion in third grade. It seems that very few people bother to make the distinction nowadays (though I’m not sure that they ever did).
Like everybody else I have my opinions, about racism, gun laws, and just about everything else. I have no problem discussing these issues with anybody. However, in regard to the questions about the facts of this shooting, I can only say this: I don’t know because I was not there.
I didn’t know these people, I am not going to comment on their motivations or actions.
It’s bothersome that people are so quick to cut and paste text/pictures from the Internet and disperse them among their social networks. No qualifiers such as “alleged” no attributions, no fact-checking. I am sickened by the people who make up their own facts, or doctor photos, to suit their preferred narrative.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the comments section of news sites. The organization’s political leanings (sorry “alleged” leanings) are irrelevant. You can go to MSNBC, or Fox; Rush Limbaugh or MotherJones. People are just making shit up.
You’re likely to see claims that a security video will show that George Zimmerman acted in self-defense, after Trayvon Martin brutally assaulted him. You’re also likely to also see claims that Zimmerman, hunted down a defenseless Martin and shot him in cold blood.
Again, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Neither were Sean Hannity, or Al Sharpton. Neither were you.
Discussion about racism, gun control, politics aside, I think something that Trayvon Martin case has made evident is that we (the US, the world) have a severe critical thinking deficit.
Hard to say if this is an Internet-enabled, deficit, or if the Internet has just made the problem more obvious. Computers allow us to create misinformation, faster than ever; and the Internet allows us to share mistakes and distortions with more people.
I guess I could write a meme, such as “Think Before You ‘Like’ ” or “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Paste” and put it on my Facebook status with “Repost if you agree.” As you probably already know……”97% of Facebook users won’t have the courage to repost it. Will you have the courage.” Honestly, I think those type of challenges, are equally laughable and pathetic, as if the act of copy/paste are acts of courage.
I think our likely destiny is that the we are heading toward an endemic of Pierre Salinger Syndrome, where a claim on the Internet is automatically assumed to be true. Because it’s on the Internet.
One thing is clear, people need to quit blaming the media. We are the media now.