Trayvon Martin should have turned 22 earlier this month, but today we mourn the fifth anniversary of his alarming death which woke up the nation.
Had he lived, he could have been a college student looking forward to wearing a Kente stole on his graduation day, a young man with a 9-to-5 anticipating his next date with a magical woman who surpassed even imagination’s wildest dreams, or a millennial dealing with one-of-a-kind déjà vu as he prepared for his first Black Lives Matter protest. He could have been all three. Only God knows and that is a tragedy.
Trayvon Martin is one of many men, women, boys, and girls of color who have fallen victim to a consequential complex whereby certain uniformed and civilian shooters and stranglers have played not only judge, jury, and executioner, but God as well. Fake gods have determined who deserves to live or die according to their own allegedly infallible law.
It is as if there is no space for people to just be people. Regardless of whether you act like a human being or a saint, fake gods can determine that you are not worthy of life. Even complete obedience can result in you being sacrificed to a deity whom you do not believe in. If you have an abundance of the main ingredient of melanin, then you can easily be turned into faux ambrosia for a fake god with a ravenous appetite for control.
In these holier-than-thou conflicts, territory is still critical. The fake gods will construct their own fleshy monuments to their power on their victims’ death places while mourners will often congregate at these same locations and erect shrines for the deceased with candles and flowers.
When video captures the fake gods crushing years of human existence into dust and letting people fall through the center of Mother Earth’s hour glass-figure, that is when we see their fake religion at its highest point. It is like the followers of the fake gods are unable to see their idols acting in an unjust manner.
Thus, the followers refuse to see their fake gods for who they are and instead imagine that people of color choke or shoot themselves to death even when the video footage clearly supports the contrary. It is the ultimate demonstration of faith—belief in the unseen.
Even when there is video footage of a fake god murdering or slaughtering a person, their followers still somehow believe that their fake god did not commit a crime. Reasonable people of all types of racial and ethnic backgrounds may see the fake gods in the video, but the followers of fake gods will still feel that the victims somehow pulled the trigger on their own demise or tightened the grip on their own necks. They believe that the victims somehow directed their own deprivation of family, friends, hugs, kisses, laughter, joy, dreams, and growth, i.e., the hallmarks of humanity.
In order to stop the radical effects of this God complex, it would probably be helpful if the fake gods could be convinced to come down to Earth and become one with the people instead of trying to impose their beliefs on them one shot at a time. Strangely enough, it would be nice if the fake gods followed in the footsteps of another god-like figure who they are presumably quite familiar with. That would probably put them back in touch with their humanity.
But, then again, how can you expect fake gods to freely convert to humanity if they still feel that their greatest powers are immunity which stands on morally shaky ground and the ability to turn their victims’ blood into invisible ink which can replace the language in any inconvenient man-made laws?
