In the weeks following the George Zimmerman trial, a rather shameful comparison has arisen. The comparison being made is that of Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin. This is positively disgusting and serves no other purpose than the fuel racial tensions.

• On July 14th, Malek Mouzon of the HuffPo, wrote what can only be described as a giant, myopic rationalization for the comparison.
• On July 15th at ‘Moral Monday’, Reverend William Barber of the NC NAACP made this comparison.
• The NAACP’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, Roslyn Brock, also made this comparison on the same day as Barber; July 15th.
• The most recent claim, on August 5th, was made by Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey sees a parallel between the two and in her mind it was ‘the same thing’.

Here is the summary of the case of Emmett Till:

Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi on August 24, 1955 when he reportedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. Four days later, two white men kidnapped Till, beat him, and shot him in the head. The men were tried for murder, but an all-white, male jury acquitted them. Till’s murder and open casket funeral galvanized the emerging civil rights movement. – Biography.com

The only comparison to be made here is that Martin, like Till, was visiting family in the area and both visited a store. That’s where the comparison ends.  Newsbusters recounts the case with some more details:

In 1955, Till was a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi. He spoke to a 21-year-old white woman named Carolyn Bryant who was the wife of a grocery store owner in the town.

Several nights later, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam went to Till’s great-uncle’s house, kidnapped Till, drove him to a barn where they proceeded to beat him, gouge out one of his eyes, shoot him in the head, and dispose of his body in the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.

Does that even vaguely resemble what happened to Martin?

Of course it doesn’t. Not even close.

No, it’s not even close.  What happened to Till was pure evil and not of his own choosing whatsoever. What happened to Martin was tragic but he had a hand in his own course of action leading to his death.

The narrative pushing that Martin’s death was an act of virulent racism just like Till’s is beyond the pale and ignores all the facts of the Zimmerman trial.  The President himself is also guilty as Hell of stoking racial tensions with his statements about Martin looking like the son he never had or that he could have been Martin 35 years ago. The media is complicit in the propagation of this false dichotomy. Juan Williams of FOX news agrees and who points out the FBI found no evidence that Zimmerman’s actions were racially motivated:

Ultimately, it is the job of the media to give straight, objective coverage of any story. 

Whatever the final verdict on Zimmerman, the media is clearly guilty of playing on the most primitive racial divisions in our society to fuel racial animosity and boost ratings.

There are no winners here.

Read the whole thing.

Bill Whittle handled this topic in his Afterburner video ‘The Lynching’: