Trayvon Martin: A Pro-Life Reaction to Racial Politics

Opinion   |   Ryan Bomberger   |   Mar 27, 2012   |   12:10PM   |   Washington, DC

The Radiance Foundation has been called, tweeted, and pressed to join the throngs across the nation in protesting the tragic death of Trayvon Martin. Invoking our “Black Children Are An Endangered Species” pro-life campaign, pro-abortion activists (who ignore and reject all statistics related to black genocide through abortion) demand we step into the fray.

We agree that this untimely death should be mourned.  Trayvon was a young man who had an entire lifetime of opportunity ahead of him. We also feel that by blaming racism for the death of this teenager, in typical reactionary style, the public is missing opportunities to engage in a constructive national dialogue about race and unity.

We are America—a beautiful menagerie of different races, ethnicities, religions, ideologies, shapes, sizes, and colors. This tapestry is made up of the beauty that each of us has to offer.  Sadly, threads of violence, greed, racism, elitism, hatred, and dishonesty have become inevitably interwoven, yet changeable, aspects of our humanity.

Anytime I see or hear Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton in victim-du-jour exploitation mode, my Civil Wrongs radar starts sounding. Once again, in a visceral attempt to inflame racial tensions, these hucksters inject themselves into a news event (made so by our lamestream media who strangely don’t do this the other nearly 17,000 times someone is murdered in the United States). For people like the teleprompter-challenged Sharpton, racial reconciliation is never the goal—only racial manipulation.

I’m particularly amused by the media’s description of the man—a white Hispanic–responsible for allegedly racially profiling and shooting Trayvon. Hispanics, even bi-racial ones, are usually considered a minority, but for racially dividing purposes the media has depicted Zimmerman as just a white man who shot a black teen.  Would that make Obama a white black, negating his “minority” status? I’m a white black, too—one whose passion is to serve as an agent of racial reconciliation.

We don’t even know the full details of this tragedy. Yet the press, ever eager to infuse racial strife every chance possible, has made this a circus. Lost in all of this clamor is reason and perspective.

There are 16,799 homicides within the United States in the last reported year according to the Department of Justice. Blacks are disproportionately victimized by these crimes at a rate 6 times higher than whites. But, blacks also make up the majority of the offenders with a rate that is 7 times higher than whites. Much of this is influenced heavily by disparate situations of poverty, and this poverty is due, in most part, to the alarming deterioration of the black family. Back in the 50s, over 80% of black families were intact two-parent married homes. Today, less than 30% of black homes are led by both mother and father, as we illuminate in our latest “Fatherhood Begins in the Womb” TooManyAborted.com campaign.

Shame on our mainstream media for contorting Trayvon’s death into a social commentary on race in America.  This, while they blatantly ignored actual and provable violent racist attacks over the past several years, where black flash mobs struck terror in cities across America. Where’s the outrage for the white teen lit on fire on his own porch after being chased by older black teens? The silence from media only reinforces that they’re interested in their own twisted one-sided race narrative.  According to the Department of Justice, “most murders are intraracial where 84% of white victims were killed by whites and 93% of black victims were killed by blacks.”

We need to get a grip on race in America and stop excusing violent behaviors from anyone, regardless of race or socio-economic standing.

President Obama, who naturally should be a reconciler on issues of race as he is wonderfully bi-racial, seems to squander ever opportunity when these issues arise. We’ve had the “beer summit,” the shrugging off of Black Panther voter intimidation, the silence about flash mob violence, (see Philly Mayor Nutter right) and now the personalizing of Trayvon’s death. The President stated, in part: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” These words immediately made a racial case of this, as if any loss of life, regardless of skin color, isn’t as equal a tragedy.

So, I resist any invitation to jump on a bandwagon.  The Radiance Foundation values human life—all human life from conception until natural death. We also value being well informed so that we can look at this present situation and react in a way that affirms life, not widen chasms among people with divisive racial rhetoric.