Drug Allusions in the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown Narratives
Drugs have played an overwhelming role in villainizing minorities, despite the fact the fact usage of illegal substance is, statistically, evenly distributed between all ethnicities. In both entertainment and news media, the image of even the most casual Hispanic or African American drug user is presented as far more dangerous and violent than a Caucasian user of the same or even more volatile substances. The application of drugs as a vehicle for the villainization of a minority appears in both the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown case.
Zimmerman’s call to 911 includes him observing that Trayvon “looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something” (Botehlo) and the article later makes a point of noting that medical examiners found traces of THC in the teenager’s system. In fact, Botelho’s CNN article makes four implications to Trayvon’s alleged marijuana usage, despite being less than two pages long. The injection of a drug narrative is even more forced in the case of Darren Brown. Officer Wilson’s description of the teenager is oddly specific in pointing out that Brown’s socks had “green marijuana leaves as patterns on them” (State of Missouri v. Darren Wilson 208). Although these allusions to marijuana are made, there was no indication that either Brown or Martin were heavy drug users or even that they were in a drug addled state at the time of their respective murders. With this in mind, the allusions seem to serve no other purpose than to contribute to the devaluation of the victims’ innocence. The implications act as tools to depict them not as teenagers who may or may not have at one time indulged in the type of harmless experimentation which has become a backbone of young adult aimed films the likes of SuperBad or Harold & Kumar, but as young thugs and budding junkies.
I really like the controlled pace with which you unfold your argument. You are really trying to make an argument and you set it up as a larger issue outside the narrative, and then you go into the text and examining the way associations between drug use and Martin appear more than once in the short article. I think you do a good job of making that point. I think in the end you branch out in a way that seems to go to far from the text for this particular assignment. Indeed you kind of have an introduction and a conclusion, which in a much longer paper would be great. For these posts though I’d rather you go deeper into your analysis then spend time expanding beyond the text.
Overall I think this post is really strong. The only thing more I will say is that you make pretty much the same reading/argument as another post that comes before you. Your language and your manner of introducing and concluding are totally different, and I have no doubt that you both were just noticing the same thing. But one of the categories for grading the posts is originality. I would have liked to have seen you A) addressed a different issue or B) acknowledge the post (cite the author and title and maybe even include a link) that was already up and then taken that argument even further. Option B is the more sophisticated option, but A works too.