You know, sometimes life just isn’t fair. To all my sons, and other young brothers out there, please take this one lesson from both the Trayvon Martin and Aaron Hernanez cases even though one is an innocent victim and the other is an accused criminal: public perception is that pesky little factor that creeps into cases when you least expect it. Those of us who believe in the rule of law hold fast to what we know to be the fair and legal way to approach the journey toward justice. We know what evidence matters, what facts are legally relevant and what a judge, an officer, or a jury SHOULD legally consider when working with an arrest or a case. Sad thing is there are people who know that perception is that invisible but deadly factor that technically cannot legally be regulated. And when it comes down to it, trust me, those who seek to define you, will absolutely use it in their favor.
LESSON: please understand that anyone who ever chooses to accuse you of ANYthing, whether you did it or not, will absolutely take as their first priority to convince onlookers that you are the type of person capable of committing such an offense. Please know that they will pull up every facebook, every instagram, every twitter, and ever tumblr picture you have ever taken with a gun, with weed, with knives, or a scarf hanging from your back pocket, every status you have ever posted with profanity, every tweet you have tweeted while “keepin it real,” all the pictures with money, all the pictures with hand signs. They will seize every picture or communication that they deem fits the description of a stereotypical common thug who folks would believe deserves to be punished. All of those snapshot images will in an instant transition from something you did in the privacy of your own home with your own friends into something that is now city, state, or nationwide news.
And just like that, whether it’s relevant or not, officials will use it to portray you as someone who is violent, who deserves punishment. As adults, if we don’t communicate this to our nephews, our nieces, our sons and daughters, our mentees, our students and our friends, we do them almost as great an injustice as those who seek to define them. Our kids MUST know that their image to the world IS important.
Trayvon Martin died at the hands of a man who had no right to bring harm to him in ANY way. He did NOTHING to deserve that. His personal style has NOTHING to do with his death. This is a case about murder where TRAYVON MARTIN is the victim, but we are all witnessing with our own eyes how quickly perception is being manipulated from being a story about a young boy murdered by a reckless, unqualified vigilante who disregarded the orders of 911 officials to being a case about a young, common, violent thug who deserved to die for scaring this man who was only protecting his community. And that is shameful!
And in that same case, Rachel Jeantel has been placed on the stand as the young lady who was the last human being to speak with her murdered friend yet is having her image manipulated into the young lady who lied to make her friend look less violent. She has been forced to use over and over again the language that Trayvon Martin last used because the goal is to get these 6 suburban women, many of whom carry their own gun to protect themselves from criminal types, who sit on the jury to view this Trayvon Martin as some mean and nasty, violent thug roaming our streets, clearly up to no good who violently attacked poor unfortunate George Zimmerman as he strived to keep his neighborhood clean and “pure” of the wrong kinds of folks.
I want so much to be able to just say you are a private citizen and have the right to do anything you please, take any pictures you wish to and post them, say whatever you want to say out of your mouth, wear whatever you want to wear, because all of that is 100% true. You DO have that right. But for the sake of those who do not care about your privacy, for the sake of those who wish to define you for their own sick and twisted purposes, be careful of what you post for public consumption. Sometimes your image is all you have.
I pray for the family of Trayvon Martin and for this young lady Rachel who is trying so hard to do her friend’s memory justice.
beyondthedistractions 