AN ABSENCE OF ANGER

            In a day when people speak so boldly about rising up to support the call for social justice, something is amiss:  lo and behold, a double-standard is being applied.  King Solomon warns of such a sham in one of his proverbs saying,  dif-fering weights are an abomination to the Lord, and a false scale is not good (Prov.20:23).  Such a discrepancy was made ever so obvious in this recent summer of our discontent.  This is another instance where silence is not golden at all.      

            On August the 9^th, in Wilson, NC, a 25-year-old black male named Darius Sessoms murdered a five-year-old white boy named Cannon Hinnant.  According to the Daily Wire (August 11, 2020), Sessoms, who lived nearby, “ran across the lawn to Hinnant and shot him in the head at point-blank range as his two sisters, ages seven and eight, looked on.”  As reported by neighbors, Hinnant was in the front yard riding his bike.  “The boy’s father, too distraught to speak to the local news on camera, was heard screaming after the shooting.”  He rushed out to hold his bleeding son before he was rushed to a nearby medical center, where he was later pronounced dead.  Sessoms took off in a black vehicle after the shooting and was apprehended the next day by a team from the U.S. Marshals, Goldsboro Police and the Wayne County Sheriff's office.  The suspect has been charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond at the Wilson County jail.  A neighbor who saw this event unfold relayed:  the young man walked up to the little boy who was just sitting on his bike.  I don't understand why he did it.  How can you walk up to a little boy point-blank and put a gun to head, and just shoot him?  How can anyone do that?   Cannon Hinnant was to start kindergarten the next week.

            What makes this story especially perplexing (and truly troublesome) is the silence of the mainstream media.  While publicized at length on social media, outlets like CNN, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, etc., all conspicuously overlooked it.  One can only ask “WHY???"  In a summer when accusations of RACISM have been hurled about and supported by protests that evolved into destructive and deadly rioting, why was so little attention given to this story?  This makes my blood boil.  It is bad enough that a beautiful, innocent five-year old was executed.  And it is even worse if it was a crime of racial hatred.  But the absence of anger among many pushes me over the edge.  Does the mainstream media have a script to follow?  Have they totally lost their journalistic integrity?  Is there a grossly slanted view of bigotry (only white against blacks) that is now driving the news narrative?  Something really stinks about this and it would do us all well to not bury our heads in the sand. 

            Regardless of the color of one's skin, how is it that law-breakers resisting arrest can come to be heralded and venerated by the media and "the mobs", but the horrific death of a precious young child isn’t given the time of day?  Heated political disagreements notwithstanding, THIS DOUBLE-STANDARD IS NOT RIGHT!  In fact, it is rotten to the core.  Whatever your stripe - - Democrat, Republican, Independent, Socialist, or something else - - one can only ask, why was there a lack of reporting and why was there not a collective outrage across the board? 

                                                                                      Terry Siverd / Cortland Church of Christ