Recently, there has been a lot of backlash from people about what really went down the night that Trayvon Martin died. Personally, I think that there is more to the story than what we know at this moment but the facts are indisputable; Trayvon Martin was shot and he was shot by someone who is a self appointed crime watch leader who carries a gun around and he was told by a police dispatcher to not follow Trayvon and he still did anyway.
With that said, there is a picture being posted on Facebook that reads the title “The Media’s Narrative”, underneath this there is the media released picture of George Zimmerman and his mug shot from some odd years ago, along with the picture that is circling around of a young looking Trayvon, with the words “(5-7 years ago)” below it. Below this there is a picture of George Zimmerman in a suit and tie, looking very professional and picture of a person (who is not Trayvon Martin) flipping his middle fingers without a shirt on and pants sagging below his waist, with the words “current” below it. This blatant sign of disrespect has sparked a lot of feuds on Facebook. The people that are posting this picture are trying to use the argument that this picture only depicts that fact the media tries to push their own agenda of what they want the world to be mad about and asking us to completely ignore the insensitive nature of the photo.
I participated in a very heated argument with a person on my Facebook for this same reason. The argument this person was trying to make is that he was not trying to offend anyone with this picture but just show it in order to disprove the media’s narrative. When what he was actually doing was offending most of the people on his Facebook who find this subject to be very sensitive. There were arguments coming from both sides stating that they agree with this photo and anyone who doesn’t see what it’s trying to say is trying to use racism as the reason. This picture depicts nothing but the jarring lines that are drawn by society of what it means to be a young black man, walking home alone and tragically being killed. The picture shows that there is no other reason for this besides the typical black stereotype of a “gangster thug” and that by somehow being this way (as depicted in the picture) there is no remorse for him. Needless to say, the person who originally posted the picture deleted the post.