Too much, too little, too late ...
President Obama discussed the George Zimmerman acquittal in
the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin during a surprise appearance at the
White House briefing on Friday, July 19, 2013.
While President Obama focused in his about 18-minute speech
on the need for the country to protest peacefully, to move on, and to learn
lessons from Trayvon Martin’s death, the mass media focused on reporting one
major thing – when President Obama said that “Trayvon Martin could have been me
35 years ago.”
Obama continues to say …
“And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that -- that doesn’t go away.”
On Google, 1490 news sources reported on President Obama
with most of those news sources writing about Obama’s statement that “Trayvon
Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
Not many readers see the news sources beyond the first 20
articles appearing on Google and not many readers actually get an accurate
picture of what President Obama was trying to say.
Of course President Obama did not mean to say that he actually
was like Trayvon Martin who was from a broken family, suspended three times
from school, and had been in trouble for things most teens get in trouble for
and a bit more.
President Obama’s intent was to use himself to make his
listeners understand what the African-American community is experiencing and
why there is so much outrage about Trayvon Martin’s death and about the
acquittal of George Zimmerman.
But unfortunately, the general media is not interested in
President Obama’s intent but in what makes a good headline.
When listening to President
Obama’s complete speech or reading the transcript of his speech on our
JT19News blog, it becomes quite clear that President Obama intended to address
the many problems that the country is still facing regarding race, law
enforcement, and the judicial system.
Unfortunately, what President Obama did not address was the
root of many of this country’s problems which goes beyond race -- childhood experience.
With all the media coverage about Trayvon Martin’s death,
there is very little coverage about Trayvon Martin’s childhood and his suspension from school -- maybe because it doesn’t fit into the
idolized picture that some groups have turned Trayvon Martin into for their own
interests.
The story of a 17-year-old young man getting shot does not
just begin on the night of the shooting. The story of a 17-year-old getting
shot, no matter what race he is, most often begins in childhood.
President Obama’s speech on July 19, 2013, intended to
remind everyone that there is a lesson to be learned from Trayvon Martin’s
death. But without including a teen’s childhood into that lesson, the quest for
true change will be in vain.
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