Happy Birthday Trayvon.

Happy Birthday Trayvon. You would have been 26 today, but instead your life was cut short.

The day the news of your murder came out, I was shocked. I was appalled that a man could racially profile a black teenager, chase them around a neighbourhood, and then kill them, all while thinking that he was in the right. That day was the chip in the veneer, the first time I understood that racism was more ingrained in our society than I originally thought.

After the shock and the sadness came the thought that my 13 year old brother was almost as tall as you. If circumstances were different, what happened to you could have happened to him. I thought about that often when he went to school in Missouri just a few years later.

My second thought was, “This is why my dad was so adamant that we never wear our hoods up,”. When I was entering my teen angst phase, my dad had explained that he didn’t want my brother and I to walk around with our hoods on, because he didn’t want people to think negatively of us. I thought that presence or absence of a hood on a head was an absurd basis to make decisions about a person’s intentions and character, but I obeyed him because he was my father. But when I read the story of your death, I realized that the anger that I heard in my father’s voice when he talked about this wasn’t anger at all, but it was fear. I finally understood the overly high price that one could pay for wearing your hood up while living as a black person.

I then thought about how we were the same age. I thought about the milestones that were ahead of us: graduations, first jobs, weddings, kids, etc. I cried knowing that you wouldn’t to graduate high school or college, you wouldn’t fall in love, you wouldn’t start a family. I cried over your life lost and the potential that was lost with it.

I followed trial closely over the next year and a half. As I read the news surrounding it, I was thoroughly convinced that you were going to get justice. Honestly, I think that I was still fairly naive about how deep racism ran in the hearts and minds of so many. I couldn’t imagine that people could see this level of racial profiling, and the utter destruction that this specific instance of it brought, and be ok with it. Sadly, I was wrong.

I’ll never forget the moment that I heard the news of the verdict in your trial. It was a beautiful summer night, and my friend and I had the windows down as we drove home from going to the movies. As we drove, we heard the breaking news that your killer was given a not guilty verdict. I screamed.

“How could this have happened? How could the jurors listen to the 911 call and not see the grave injustice that occurred? How could they not care that an armed man chased down and shot a teenage boy who was riding his bike in a neighbourhood? And more importantly, why did everyone see this verdict as a foregone conclusion? Why aren’t people mad?”

And that’s when it finally hit me. Not only did I come to the conclusion that racism more ingrained in our society than I had realized, but it also dawned on me that a lot of people didn’t care that this is the case. I watched as some white people used every platform available to them to justify your death. I was the way that every choice and decision that you made was analyzed, scrutinized, then weaponized to destroy your character. You weren’t a teenager full of life and potential to them; you were a black man destined for trouble. To them, you weren’t human; you were just black.

9 years later, all I have to say is that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that so little has changed. I’m sorry that here we are on your birthday in 2021, and more black children, men, and women continue to be killed. I’m sorry that for some reason, your death wasn’t enough to wake the conscience of our society to see how life-threatening this racism epidemic is. Know that we won’t forget you. Know that I won’t forget you.