In recent months there have been two trials involving the killing of black teenagers by scared white men. Renisha McBride was shot in the face by Theodore Wafer when she pounded on his door in the wee hours of the morning, looking for help after a car accident. Mr. Wafer has been found guilty of second degree murder. Jordan Davis was shot by Michael Dunn, who was upset because a car full of black teens had their audio system turned up too loud for his taste. Jordan was sitting in the back seat, nowhere near the volume controls, but he was the one who was killed. Dunn's trial ended with a hung jury and he will probably be retried sometime in the future.
In both cases, the mainstream media consistently ignored the names of the victims, referring to the trials instead by other names. The trial of Wafer for the murder of Renisha McBride was referred to in almost all headlines as the "porch shooting" trial, making it sound like Wafer had shot a porch instead of a human being. Dunn's trial for the killing of Jordan Davis was billed, almost every single day, by every network, as the "loud music" trial. In neither case, by any mainstream network, was either victim's name ever mentioned in a headline; most of the time it only appeared farther down in the story. And most of the time, all the pictures were of the defendant, with none of the victim. Now I could be unduly sensitive, and I may be totally off the mark, but this seems to me a deliberate attempt on the part of the media to deny the humanity of the victims. Or maybe it's just thoughtless sensationalism, but I don't think that's it. I think the fact that both victims were African-American teenagers led directly to the media considering them somehow of less consequence than if they had been, perhaps, older, or of a different background. All the talk about "victims' rights" is just so much noise if the humanity of those victims is denied. That means all victims, not just the ones of a certain age or color or background. It means we must speak up and name those victims when the mainstream media insists on calling it a "porch shooting" or "loud music" trial and asking them to call it the Renisha McBride or Jordan Davis murder trial. Respect for the humanity of the victims, that's what it's about. Not the porch, or the loud music.