On Monday evening, the Paramount Networks aired the first part of a six-part documentary series on the death of Trayvon Martin called Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.
If multimedia impresario Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter had chosen to tell it, there was a story to be told here: a story about a boy bounced around among his biological parents and other relatives after his parents’ divorce; a story of a boy whose descent into drugs, guns, fighting, and burglary accelerated after his father left his stepmother, Alicia, his “rock,” when Trayvon was 15.
There was a story to be told of how Trayvon’s school shielded him from the criminal justice system – much as the schools in neighboring Broward County shielded Parkland’s Nikolas Cruz – even after Trayvon was apprehended at school with a weapon, a burglary tool, and stolen jewelry.
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This cautionary tale of abandonment and betrayal was not the one Jay-Z chose to tell. Instead, he submitted his audience to a TV hour of racially incendiary hokum shamelessly untethered from the inarguable facts of the case. The next five hours will not be any better.
The testimony of Trayvon’s parents, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, dominated the opening hour. Their grief seemed real enough, but instead of accepting responsibility for their son’s chaotic life, they projected their guilt onto the marginalized, dehumanized “other” of this story, George Zimmerman, the man who was forced to shoot Trayvon in February 2012 to save his own life.
The Martin family knew better. By the time a deposition was taken with Tracy Martin a year after the shooting, Tracy, Sybrina, and the…