Jordan Davis was a 17-year-old who did what a lot of
kids his age do. Listen to loud music and goof off with his friends at a gas
station. Someone
didn’t like the music Davis and his friends were playing at a Jacksonville gas
station last November. Words were exchanged. A gun was fired. Davis wound up
dead.
While awaiting trail, the man accused of killing
Davis, Michael Dunn, reached out to one local television station. Being the rabble-rousers
they are, the station led a newscast with the writings of a man who turned
Black Friday into a day the Davis family will forever remember for all the
wrong reasons.
“This case has never been about loud music,” was
just one quote in Dunn’s writing to the television station. “This case is about
a local thug threatening to kill me because I dared to ask him to turn the
music down.”
Yes, the man who stands accused of murder called the
victim a thug.
There were other quotes, including the accused’s
thoughts about the District Attorney in the case, how he has been around
firearms most of his life and etcetera. But, what stood out was the fact Dunn
went to the Zimmerman-tried-jury-approved tactic of labeling the victim, in
this case Davis, a thug on multiple occasions.
In some ways, the Davis
case is more of a tragedy than what happened to Trayvon Martin last year. The
latter got in a fight when he was approached by a stranger. The former was in a
car hanging out with his friends, and never left his vehicle, yet still wound
up just as dead as Martin.
To add insult to insinuation, one television station
stumbled over Dunn’s racially insensitive tripwire and reported Dunn’s bile
about Davis at the top of its newscast.
There is a part of me that wonders whether local
media would have jumped on the writings like Dunn’s had the accused been a
minority. But,
I’m reminded that 90 percent of newsroom supervisors in this country are white.
Rather than using news judgment, one Jacksonville television station allowed
Dunn to cast judgment, and its viewers were none the wiser for it.
When I told a close friend what the accused was
allowed to say without comment from the victim’s family, associates or State
Attorney reminded me the incident was another case of “white journalism.” His
point was that had a minority been in a position to make a decision, there is a
strong likelihood that someone points out the folly of allowing a man accused
of first-degree murder the privilege of calling the 17-year-old he’s accused of
killing a thug.
To me, it doesn’t matter what the victim looks like
in this case, it matters that the person accused of murder has defecated on the
memory of the deceased.
The dictionary defines a thug as “a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer.”
Tupac’s definition explicitly states thugs play the cards they were given… pack
a nine until it’s time to go to prison. Either way, which
person reminds you
more of a thug, Davis or Dunn?
Just because the decision-makers
are not minorities does not mean a sound decision about the letters could have
been reached.
The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville’s newspaper of record,
also published an article about the letters. Not surprisingly, the
newspaper’s version features more context and notes that the accused believes
he has been railroaded, the saw a weapon in the victim’s car the night of the
shooting and that the jail is filled with thugs.
“I’ve never been
exposed to thugs like they have here,” Dunn wrote in one letter, which was
obtained by the Times-Union in a public records request. “The jail is chock
full of blacks and they all appear to be thugs, along the line of 90 percent of
the inmates.”
Clearly, Dunn has
proven he’s a man who won’t let his version of the facts interfere with a good
story, because only 52 percent of the people who were admitted into the Duval
County jail when the most recent statistics were available were black.
Then again, something
has to fill the airwaves. And there are no laws preventing one gullible news
outlet from spending that time subtly soiling the legacy of a young man who
received a death sentence for listening to the wrong music at the wrong time at
the wrong volume.
Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb
