You know St. Trayvon.

But not St. Nick.

Well, this is a minefield, but I’ll step into it anyway, because how many of you are personally acquainted with someone who was shot to death on the street?

I’d have let it go, but the media-driven martyrdom of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent crimes and outrages it has inspired don’t seem to be going away. This morning on Drudge there was this delightful headline: School official tells students Trayvon Martin case proved it is ‘legal to hunt’ children.

Here’s an excerpt:

An email sent to students by a University of Maryland official that cites the Trayvon Martin shooting as evidence “it is legal to hunt down and kill American children in Florida” is being blasted as the latest evidence of a left-wing bias on campus.

The email, from William Dorland, director of the school’s Honors College, starts by welcoming students back to campus, but then quickly veers into politics.

“This year, we learned that it is legal to hunt down and kill American children in Florida,” it reads, in a reference to the trial of George Zimmerman, who was cleared of all charges in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. The email went out to all students in the Honors College.

Since the Zimmerman trial, we’ve already had a number of random crime incidents that seem suspiciously like black on white retaliation for the death of Martin and the unwelcome verdict in the case. I won’t enumerate. I’m not keeping score.

What seems clear, though, is that regardless of the facts, the all-important MSM ‘narrative’ is that a (sort of) white man killed a black juvenile, and so it must be, automatically has to be, no matter what, about racism. But because there are no facts supporting this narrative, the response became about futile gun control initiatives, because we have to do something and this is a way of making a big stink.

Why I’m writing this post. About 40 years ago, there was a far more vicious instance of gun crime in San Francisco. As of this writing, utterly forgotten, shoved down the MSM memory hole. Everyone’s heard of the Zodiac murders. Who has heard of the Zebra murders? Anyone?

The “Zebra” murders were a string of racially motivated murders, committed by four African-American men who were later convicted, that took place in San Francisco, California, from October 1973 to April 1974.
During 1973 and 1974, fourteen execution style murders and eight assaults occurred in San Francisco, whose police named the case “Zebra” after the special police radio band they assigned for the investigation. Twenty-two crimes in a six-month spree involved mostly white victims…

I’m resurrecting the story for three reasons. I knew the last of the fourteen victims who died. Like me, Nick Shields was a Mercersburg boy. We weren’t friends — he was in a class ahead of mine and we weren’t interested in the same things. But I remember hearing about his shocking murder. He was putting stuff in the back of a station wagon when he was suddenly riddled with bullets. There are times when it does seem the world really is coming apart. I think of the 40 years of extra life I’ve had and he didn’t. For no reason. Unless you count irrational ignorant hatred as a reason.

It’s also the case that his dad was profoundly changed by the loss of his son. There was no rhetoric of ‘hate crime’ then, and so he did all he could think to do: become an activist advocate for — what else? — gun control. He has since died, but I believe he achieved some legislative successes.

Finally, I write because no one remembers or even wants to remember that racial hatred is a two-way street. Trayvon Martin will probably be remembered forever as a victim of white racism. More crimes will be committed in his, uh, honor.

Yet there’s no sign in the record that white people made a cause out of the deaths of Nick Shields and 13 other innocents who died very expressly because of the color of their skin. And maybe one other:

Harris revealed the existence of the group to the police, and told them of a homicide which did not make the papers; it was that of a homeless man whom they had kidnapped from Ghirardelli Square. They had brought the man to Black Self-Help Moving’s warehouse, gagged and tied him up, and while he was still conscious, took turns hacking away his limbs. Harris told the detectives that they had dumped the body into the bay. He told his story in such detail that the police were convinced of its veracity, especially since the police had, on the previous December 24, recovered the bound and badly butchered torso of a male, missing its hands, feet and head, that had washed up in the city’s Ocean Beach district at the foot of Pacheco Street.

In fact, we go out of our way not to remember. Consider all the channels that make a living out of sensationalizing true crime stories. The Zebra murders are a natural for such treatment. Multiple killers, high body count, a reign of terror that may have surpassed the ‘Son of Sam’ siege in New York. But it just can’t be allowed to have happened. Because, you know.

So much for honest conversations about race in America.

P.S. So. There’s going to be a movie. Starring Jamie Fox. I’m sure it will be great. And even-handed. And all like that. If you know what I’m saying.