Zimmerman Actually Shot Two-Year-Old Black Toddler
Supporters of Trayvon's family say the images and reports about Trayvon's possible drug use, jewelry thefts and school fights are irrelevant to the shooting. OK, let's exam those assertions.
If that is true about the images then why did the family release a photo of an innocent-looking, 5 foot 2 inch twelve-year old? I suppose we readers are fortunate that Trayvon's parents did not release a photo of Trayvon when he was two years old, otherwise the rest of us would have been fooled into thinking Zimmerman had actually shot an innocent two-year-old black toddler.
News photos should at least be close to the truth. If a 17-year old who is a few inches over six foot tall is shot by a man half a foot shorter, then honest journalism requires the photo to be of a tall,17 year-old. That the parents offered a lie, and indeed that's what it was, to the news media, is plain wrong and was patently done to gain sympathy for an obvious thug and to obfuscate the facts in the shooting.
As for Trayvon's past misbehavior, it is true that it is irrelevant to the shooting, which is to say that past misbehavior is not evidence nor is it proof that Trayvon acted in a criminal manner that night. However, his past behavior is evidence that he was not the saint that his parents and media originally portrayed.
It is true that photos unrelated to an incident are irrelevant to the incident. Even if we had old photos of Trayvon breaking and entering into homes is no proof that he was intending to do so that night. However, that does not mean they are immaterial. If Trayvon had a threatening face, it is indeed material to any discussion of whether Zimmerman felt threatened.
Past bad behavior is no proof of present behavior; however that does not mean it is immaterial. If Trayvon was in a number of fights in school, then it lends credence to Zimmerman's allegation that Trayvon punched him first.
No one, not his parents, not Al Sharpton, not the media, no one but Zimmerman knows what happened that night. But because his parents knew Trayvon better than any of us, I wonder why they were afraid to offer the accurate photo of Trayvon. I suspect they knew Trayvon quite well, that he was confrontational and the type of kid to escalate a trivial matter into a deadly incident.
If Trayvon was the kind of kid to simply walk away if someone in a neighborhood was watching him, he'd be alive today, but he just had to be a gangsta and punch Zimmerman.
Honest parents would have said: "We expected that something like this would happen to him."
By the way, George Zimmerman had very good reason to be tailing a stranger in the neighborhood: in the 15 months prior to the Trayvon shooting, there were eight burglaries in that neighborhood - all of the perpetrators were young black males. (1) Of course that fact is also irrelevant to the shooting; however it does give one pause.
Here is the greatest irrelevancy but quite material to the shooting: the majority of black children in America are born out of wedlock to too many young black mothers trying to raise too many fatherless black males who later as teens have nothing to do but cruise the streets looking for trouble.
If whites are to blame for the criminality of young black men, it is because we offered incentives during the past 5 decades to black mothers to have too many children and for black fathers not to be around. Racism is not the problem - it is anti-racism, it is good intentions. Liberals and The Great Society in a few decades have done more to consign blacks into perpetual poverty than the slavery and racism of the first two hundred years in this country.
When will we ever learn?
ENDNOTES
(1):
George Zimmerman's Sanford, Fla., neighbor, said the neighborhood watchman protected his residence from a potential burglary several weeks before the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
...
When asked if, based on the string of robberies, Zimmerman should have been profiling Trayvon Martin the night of the shooting, Taaffe said: "There's an old saying, 'If you plant corn, you get corn,'"
"It is what it is," he added. "I would go on record by stating that of the eight prior burglaries in the 15 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, all of the perpetrators were young black males."
