By Eric Arthur Blair

On February 26, 2012, we know that Trayvon Martin died from a gunshot wound from a gun fired by George Zimmerman.

We know Zimmerman had called 9-1-1 to report a suspicious person walking around the neighborhood.

We know Zimmerman disregarded the dispatcher’s pleas to stay in his vehicle and to stop following Trayvon.

We know that Zimmerman and Martin had a physical altercation just before Trayvon was shot.

That’s about all anyone knows for certain.

Either way, it was a tragedy.

What has taken place since then is another tragedy.

Initially, the media seemed disinterested in this case.

Sure, the local media ran with it, as they should have.

Only as people began discussing the incident and Trayvon’s family requested the FBI’s involvement, and the mishandling of the case by local authorities became known, did the media and race hustlers circle their wagons and create the so-called racial incident.

Once it reached this phase, the images of a young Trayvon Martin and a surly George Zimmerman next to him quickly made the rounds and the racial imagery was born.

No media investigation was needed to complete their template.

They just needed a young black man gunned down by a white man to fit the profile of a hate crime.

So nearly two weeks after the incident, the media created another racist incident to rival James Byrd being dragged by a pickup truck.

Of course, what good is a racism story without the presence of hate hustler Al Sharpton?

Sharpton arrived on the scene energized at the opportunity to stir things up.

Sharpton spoke to a protesting crowd that had gathered and asked them to join him in his perverted quest for justice.

He asked the crowd if they “were ready for violence,” ironically, stoking the crowd into a frenzy that would resemble a lynch mob.

Not to be outdone, the kings of hate, Louis Farrakhan and the New Black Panther Party, would eventually place a $10,000 bounty on the head of George Zimmerman, acting as the judge, jury, and executioner that would violate Zimmerman’s civil rights in the process.

Of course, Sharpton leading this charade should come as no surprise to those that have seen him in the public eye for the last few decades.

How is Tawana Brawley anyway?

How is the Duke Lacrosse team doing after Sharpton and company ruined their lives?

How are the families of those murdered by a Sharpton-inspired protestor at Freddy’s Fashion Mart getting by in these tough times?

Online petitions demanding the arrest of George Zimmerman were started, some reaching nearly one million signatures.

Students at over 50 high schools in the Miami area staged walkouts. Marches were planned. Rallies held.

Professional sports teams took team photos with their hoodies on, in support of the slain teenager who was wearing a hoodie at the time of the shooting.

Director Spike Lee published Zimmerman’s home address to his Twitter feed, which resulted in his followers urging others to “turn up the heat on his bitch ass,” and “let’s go smash this ni**a.”

T-shirts were printed with Zimmerman’s face on the front with the caption, “P***y Ass Cracker.”

We find out that the address Lee posted was incorrect, forcing the innocent habitants of the home to flee for their safety.

Justice!

Photos of Zimmerman remained the same. But the pictures of Trayvon kept showing him at a younger and younger age while Zimmerman’s surly picture continued to provoke the appropriate responses that fueled the media template of racism.

We also learn that Trayvon was a 6’2” athletically built football player, not some 5-foot skinny kid simply carrying Skittles.

You could smell the blood in the water.

Forget that 41 people were shot and killed in our President’s home city of Chicago in one weekend in the midst of the Trayvon uproar, we got us an epidemic of hate crimes in Florida to tend to!

The media template of racist whites gunning down black kids in hoodies had been set.

The guilty verdict of Zimmerman had been handed down by the jury on television and Facebook.

The professional race hucksters had made an appearance, threatened George Zimmerman and stoked the flames of injustice implying that a return to Jim Crow was just around the corner if America didn’t act now!

Then we get the news that George Zimmerman, like our president, is half white.

We also learn that Zimmerman has mostly Latino and Black family members.

We learn that Zimmerman and his wife mentor young black children.

We learn that Zimmerman simply didn’t exit his car and immediately start shooting.

We learn that Zimmerman and Trayvon scuffled, resulting in a broken nose and wounds to the back of Zimmerman’s head.

We learn that a 13-year-old witnessed the fight and identified Zimmerman as the person they saw laying on the ground screaming for help while Trayvon beat on him.

We learn that this is exactly what Zimmerman told police immediately after the incident.

But the media didn’t ask the question of how a 13-year-old and an apparent murderer would have the exact story to tell the police.

Why bother? They already knew the story they wanted and facts be damned.

We then learn that NBC doctored the 9-1-1 transcript, making it appear that Zimmerman wasn’t asked by the dispatcher to identify the race of Trayvon.

Instead, they just played the audio of Zimmerman stating, “He looks black.”

We learn that NBC had to fire the producer for this blatant falsification.

We learn that the footage showing Zimmerman at the police station was distorted as to not show the actual wounds on Zimmerman’s head.

We also, on April 20, see a picture taken of Zimmerman minutes after police arrived on the scene, a picture that shows him still bleeding from the wounds on the back of his head.

We also learned that Trayvon had been recently suspended for having drugs at his high school and by possessing stolen jewelry in his backpack.

While Zimmerman may or may not have acted inappropriately, did he commit a hate crime because he was out hunting for young, black kids in hoodies?

Or, did he simply overstep his role as a neighborhood watch volunteer, resulting in the death of a fellow human being?