By Mike Ullery
Chief Photographer
mullery@dailycall.com
The court of public opinion is, once again, trying a case before it can make it into a court room. This time, the very fact that a case may never make it to a court room has added fuel to the fire.
In February, in the town of Sanford, Florida, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman. Martin was black. Zimmerman is Hispanic, although early reports chose to insinuate that he was white.
Most of us are familiar with the case, to date. Zimmerman claims he shot Martin in self defense. Rather than waiting for police to sort through witness accounts and get to the facts, the court of public opinion, as usual, has jumped in, voicing their opinion without a shred of evidence.
Also, as usual, the media is sitting back, a smile on its face, as it fans the flames for liberals to cry "Racism, racism," at the top of their lungs.
As an added bonus, liberals and the media are giving a shot of adrenaline to the clothing industry by giving hooded sweatshirts, or "hoodies," a new popularity. Could this be the long-awaited economic boost that President Obama has been forecasting?
Speaking of racism and Obama, this incident marks yet another time that our Commander-in-Chief has shown his true self as a racist by coming to the defense of young Martin. It brought to mind an incident a few years back where Obama quickly jumped on the racial bandwagon to defend a friend of his, once again without a single fact on which to base his opinion. It is most scary, indeed, when our president leads the country in promoting a situation inciting race as a factor, when, in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with the case.
The president managed to calm that faux pas down with the help of a cold beer but I am beginning to see a pattern.
All of this enforces my opinion that racism in our country is not defined only by traditional terms. Racism is also when members of the black community try to take a situation in which a black is injured, killed or threatened by someone of another race for any of a number of reasons, and attempt to spin the story to have racial motivation or overtones.
First of all, where are these same folks when a black person kills a white person? You never hear a word. You ask the question, "Race motivated?" You wait for the answer ... none.
If you want to eliminate racism in our county, you must first acknowledge that some people are thieves. Some are violent. Their motives are many. The don't care if their victim is black, white, red or yellow. To them, we are just a target.
Looking specifically at the Martin/Zimmerman case, I have formed the opinion that Zimmerman made a series of stupid decisions that day. Those decisions put him in a confrontational situation with Martin. Self defense? I don't know. I'm not privy to all the fact and neither are you. Based on the known "facts" being batted around, the only thing I can come up with is that doing something stupid does not make one a racist.
My advice to Americans is to shut up and wait until the facts are truly in. Stop wearing the hoodies as a show of support. Admit it, all you want to do is make others think you are cool for supporting a cause you don't know a thing about — yet again.
And finally, stop the cries of racism. A huge step toward eliminating racism is to admit that, sometimes, bad things happen to good people for reasons we cannot explain. It's not about race. It is about good vs. evil and I would like to think that we are all on the same side.
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