Personal Narrative Essay: The Trayvon Martin Case

Did you know that unarmed black men are seven times more likely to die than white men? Racism is as old as human society itself. As long as human beings have been around, people have always seemed to have hated or feared people with a different skin color. Racism is just a part of the human nature. Trayvon Benjamin Martin was just 17 when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, in Sanford, Florida on February 2012. The murder of Trayvon Martin affected many people. The death of Martin was just the first of several deaths where a white person killed a black innocent person. Since the deaths weren’t stopping the #BlackLivesMatter movement began.

JG: I wanted to leave my wife, because I felt that she did not love me anymore. When I was in basement she came and did not want me to leave. She then took the children and left with them.

Growing up in an one bedroom single parent home with eight kids I was an angry child faced with countless obstacles growing up. The things that I have seen and the situations I have been in through growing up I know that I shouldn’t be here today.There are guys that I grew up with who are now either dead, in jail, or still in the streets. By overcoming these things it has molded me into the young man I am today; a person who is determined to be great and determined to leave an impact on people's lives in everything that I do. As I continue to grow, others are seeing the transition that I am making into a black man who while he may be from the projects he is taking actions to become better and

You did not go overboard lol, I'm really happy that you are very informed about this because I am about to drop some 'light' reading on you ;)

We spend our entire lives trying to figure out who we are, and as much as we all would like to believe we start with a blank slate, that simply isn’t the case. Some of us are born with, albeit slightly hidden, marks of what our history already dictates for us. Racial perception in society has always been a topic of controversy throughout the entire nation. Based on past occurrences, it has been proven that black and brown people as a whole have been oppressed, mistreated, and even wrongfully persecuted based on social stigmas conceived by society. Society today have the wrong ideologies; they believe that a safer environment means locking away individuals that appear to be a menace or danger based on the color of their skin. However, this mentality is flawed because locking up individuals does not promote a change; it only increases hate and eliminates the chance for someone to change their ways and become a better person. In the novel “Citizen” by Claudia Rankins the poem “In Memory of Trayvon Martin”, “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander, alongside the video situation 6, both conveyed that racism is prevalent in the modern world today as one should take to account the toll of microaggressions on the political and personal standpoint of equality for all colored individuals.

Cops have been able to get away with injustice for too long. White cops are using stereotypes to justify abuse, and that should end. In the case of Trayvon Martin, police brutality went too far. Not only did a cop unjustly shoot a 17 year old boy, but his trial was also acquitted and a he got to walk free. My movement, stands against this misuse of power in law enforcement. Spurred on by witnessing too many guilty people walk free just because they are synonymous with a badge. My movement has the drive to see equality across the board in America. In order to ensure the end of racial injustice and misuse of power by cops we propose that the judicial system take more responsibility in the trails of racially biased law enforcement. We understand

I know understand how our education system is detrimental to people of color. For elementary and middle school, my family lived in Koreatown in Los Angeles. I used school permits that allowed me to go to schools in better neighborhoods. It was not until my first year in high school when I could not get a permit, that I went to an underprivileged, underserved school that struggled with gang problems and overcrowding. It was the only time I received a subpar education. I moved to the suburbs in tenth grade and struggled to adjust to the rigorous standards and honors classes that had not been available before. I realized then that

I was scrolling down my twitter feed one day and was tired of seeing the same posts over and over again so I proceeded to hit the refresh icon. After doing so my timeline was flooded with different accounts posting the same headline, “The Michael Brown Shooting in Ferguson, Missouri.” The post came out hours after the incident had happened. The post was up for around fifteen minutes but had already had hundreds of thousands of comments from people all over. Thousands of people, including myself, had retweeted the post so their followers could also see what had happened. By the end of the day, every other social media platform was talking about the incident. Not only did the people of Ferguson hear about the situation, but every city in Missouri

I feel as if so many innocent lives are being took and there needs to be a changed . Michael Brown , Trayvon Martin , Eric Garner these are the names of three African American men that were murdered in the street , two of which were in broad daylight. Trayvon Martin was simply walking home from the store minding his own business when he was racially profiled by George Zimmerman . Zimmerman called Sanford police to report Martin for suspicious behavior, the two later had an altercation and Zimmerman shot Martin in the chest . In fact, just like Martin , Garner was innocent minding his own when officer Daniel Pantaleo tried to arrest Garner after telling him and another officer he was not selling cigarettes without tax stamps they tried to arrest

I believe that the world is our Instrument and that we are the chords composing the songs of our experiences. When I think of art, I think of how historically, music has been used as an Instrument to not only rejoice, but also to tell a story of the adversities that took place during a given time.

I walked in to see a line off people at the front counter. It was a very busy day for them. The workers were walking back and forth behind the counter not even noticing I was standing there. I began to feel very hot so I sat down at the closet table towards the front. I was trying to avoid the people walking to their tables with their food, but all they did was look at me as they walked. The manager finally saved me and walked out to where I was and asked “Are you ready?” and all I thought in my head was ‘no not really’, but I kept it to myself. This was a different kind of nervous feeling that I’ve been used to. I just turned 16 and working at Burger King was nothing like babysitting. It made me more social than I’ve ever been. It made me

He thought he was some type of beast thinking he could take on all them guys

I always knew racism, but I never thought I would experience it in my own life. Beginning of my sophomore year a fellow classmate of mine decided to post a video on social media saying,"Hi n*ggers how are you today." Being a minority in high school is tough but this situation made it worse. Knowing that a fellow peer was disrespecting me struck a feeling in my heart. Watching the video of this student having no regrets about what she said honestly put a toll on my life. Soon the head of school found out and actions were taken place. This experience makes me have a passion to work harder because I know that there will be obstacles that will try to run over me but I will overcome them.Also at the end of the day a collection of people are just

Achieving higher education as a student with financial needs was my greatest achievements that I have ever succeeded in. Coming from a low income neighborhood and growing up with gang violence around me, one of my main goals was to surpass and succeed what was going on around me. My greatest fear was that I would not be able to go far in my life or experience what the world had to offer. Hearing police sirens, playing on graffitied playgrounds or having helicopters shine their light in my own backyard was not the ideal experience for a child, but for me, it was commonplace. My neighborhood was predominantly Latino and African American and on many occasions, I would hear racial slurs being thrown in school. Growing up, I developed a habit of being cautious of others and learned to fear people that I did not know. I was afraid to be open and speak my mind because of the fear of being scorned or having others react violently.

The day after Philando Castile was murdered, I was hanging out with my best friend, Josh. As we were driving back to my house I heard the radio playing a testimony from a very distraught women lamenting the death of this man I had never heard of. I insensitively brushed it off as another case of police brutality and left it at that. A few hours after we arrived at my house, Josh received a text from his mom. She wanted him to go home. I knew his parents were strict so I didn’t think much of it. However, after he left, Josh explained that it was because of the shooting that his parents didn’t want him out that night. I was so disappointed with myself. It had never even crossed my mind how this racially motivated shooting might affect my best friend, an African-American in a predominantly white suburb. Before this, I believed nothing bad could happen where I live. It’s a picture perfect suburb, and I felt safe inside that bubble. In a sort of blissful ignorance, I wanted to believe that racism was just an abstract issue that is outside my own daily life. Nevertheless, just 30 minutes away, a black man was shot while reaching for his id because a police officer ‘feared for his life,’ and the echoes of his death opened my mind to the realization that the effects of racism are right outside my door.