Because the night

Over the weekend, my cousin was killed in one of the oddest ways imaginable. Someone took a wooden stake and drove it through his chest, killing him. That person will not be charged.

You see folks, my cousin was dressed as a vampire. He was asking for it. There's no Stand Your Ground or any such law here, just the common sense of public opinion. We the people know that if a woman dresses provocatively she is asking to be raped. We the people know that, if a black man has arms, he is not unarmed and is deserving of death because he probably smoked marijuana. My cousin now knows that if you dress as a vampire, you die by the stake.

Alert readers might have already guessed that I made up the part about my cousin getting killed. I got a bunch of cousins, all are currently accounted for and none run around in vampire costumes, at least not this time of year. Check back late next month.

It's sadly tiresome that when these young, unarmed black teens get killed, so many people spend so much time back-tracking to uncover reasons why it was okay to kill them. It's like a murder trial in reverse where the victim is on trial and the killer is deemed as "the real victim". We saw it with the national stories of Trayvon Martin and more recently with Michael Brown in Missouri. This is not supposed to be how our justice system works.

It's like far too many rape cases have been and still are where the victim is often presumed to be responsible for the violence committed against them. "What was she wearing?"

Rape is a crime of opportunity. Most crime is. A woman can be in the right place but, at the wrong time. Same with black youth, walking from the store, going from point A to point B. Trayvon was wearing a dark hoodie and, after the fact, that attire was deemed to be gangster clothing. A lot of attractive women wear short skirts and or low-cut tops. So do unattractive women. They want people to notice them. If you've ever seen advertising, you know this is extremely normal as portrayed in our society. Beautiful women sell cars, perfume, soap- whatever. It is perfectly legal and socially acceptable to dress sexy.

Well, until you get raped. Then it's a bad thing. Same with the not-always-fashionable wearing of black skin. It's great in sports or on Denzel Washington but not so much- for many people- on a street in Anytown, USA at night.

Most of life is walking in the shoes of another, whether they be high-dollar sneakers or high heels. A woman passed out on a couch, upstairs in a frat house is not asking to be raped. She's not asking for anything. Ask yourself if you were passed out at a party, would you like to be sodomized? Really now- do I have to wait for an answer?

Would you expect to be shot and killed for walking in the street, whether by a cop or a vigilante cop-wannabe? Would you accept it if your child died that way because he made someone "afraid" one night and a new law said his death was legal? I'm not waiting. I think we know the answer.

Going back into someone's life to discover they smoked marijuana, cut school or enjoyed the heck out of sex with previous boyfriends has nothing to do with the night they left this earth or their psyche was killed. It's not payback for previous questionable choices in life. It's not cause and effect or, there you go...we now saw that coming...

We know the answer. Maybe we should stop with the questions except when they deal with the crime itself and maybe stop criminalizing the victims? Aren't we all potential victims?