Race to judgement

After reading John Young’s column I just had to write. I am sick of reading about what a sweet child Trayvon was when if he hadn’t been suspended from school for robbery and drugs he would not have even been in Zimmerman’s neighborhood in the first place. Then the media kept the picture of a him as a young boy instead of the 6-foot 3-inch 17-year-old young man he was.

But how many of you reading this letter even remember Antonio West? He was the adorable little 13-month-old baby sitting in his stroller when a black teen shot him right in the face killing him and then wounding his mother because she didn’t have the money he demanded. Then a grand jury in Brunswick, Ga., ruled the black teens who murdered him would not face the death penalty. This white family made the mistake of being white in a 73 percent non-white neighborhood, but his murder wasn’t ruled a “hate crime.” I never heard President Obama even acknowledge his murder and Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson didn’t go to Georgia and organize marches to bring his murderers to justice. There isn’t a white equivalent of Al Sharpton because if there was he would be branded racist. So, nobody rushed to Brunswick to demonstrate and demand justice for Antonio. There is no “White Panther” party either to put a bounty on the lives of the two black teens who murdered him. There were no posters or t-shirts with pictures of this sweet, innocent baby on them either.

It is always sad when anybody is killed, especially a child. But I would like you to also remember this innocent 13-month-old Antonio West when you are bombarded with all the media frenzy about Trayvon and them trying to make him a martyr. How can they put his death in the same sentence with Emmett Till and Medger Evers back in the 1950s and early ’60s — those guys were deliberately sought out and murdered and were not tragic accidental deaths like Trayvon. Quit trying to bring race into everything as that is doing nothing except dividing America at a time we all need to come together to make this country an even greater one than it has been.

Carolyn Costanza

Breckenridge