The revelation of Trayvon Martin’s death and many of the reactions to it are disturbing to me for reasons that go beyond the cluttered and still undefined evidence of the case.  As an executive of an agency that works daily with adults and youth, many of whom are African American males, I am disturbed by all of the attention grabbing individuals and organizations that seem more interested in position than the families involved.  Furthermore, I am disturbed by a desire of advocates to validate Trayvon’s “victimhood” by painting him with a stroke of unnecessary goodness or sainthood.  In other words, Trayvon Martin can be a victim of a horrible crime without being the greatest kid of all time.

With cases like Trayvon’s, particularly when issues of race, gender, and class arise, many advocates begin to paint a positive life portrait of the victim.  This is a defense mechanism to combat our country’s deep seeded negative imagery of people of color.  In this case, the African American male image seems not only to be a possible barrier for  Trayvon’s last moments on earth, but also one for the very people who claim to advocate for his life’s meaning in our justice system. 

There are many examples of this behavior.  Some advocates immediately suggested that he was an honor student.  Many groups used a lightened and touched up photo to make him seem more innocent and less dark as if that somehow will convince the public he is not the “blackness” we should fear (How shucking and jiving is that?!).  While his school suspension and other non-violent behavioral incidents have been mentioned, we should not feel it necessary to make those parts of his life, nor the defense of them, part of the events that took place that night.  We must avoid the reverse “Willie Horton syndrome” (See infamous attack ad from 1988 Presidential Election aimed at Michael Dukakis).

As advocates for justice we do not need to give the people we fight for culturally accepted credentials or imagery, real or not.  This case is about the death of a young man, who may have been the victim of a modern-day lynching due to our mixed cultural messages about Black males and cowboy style vigilantism (See many Clint Eastwood or John Wayne movies).  Let us stick to the facts and also remember the thousands of Black males that die unnecessarily at the hands of others who despise them as well as those who look just like them.  This is about evidence and justice for a grieving family. 

Again, for my authentic and unauthentic advocates, Trayvon does not need to be a saint, and he is definitely no Willie Horton.