Letter: Bias of leaders evident by actions

Regardless of whether we agree or not with the George Zimmerman verdict, the death of a young man and the ensuing events and legal process should cause Americans introspection.

Continued media bias is obvious when emphasis focuses on race — there is always the statement of someone being black, but not Hispanic, Asian, Native American or any other ethnicity.

A member of Congress dressing in hoodies and publicly, on the House floor, stating that a teenager was profiled, stalked and killed was more than irresponsible.

President Obama, who rarely missed photo ops, weighed in with the statement, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” POTUS, with an Ivy League law degree, should have known the prejudice he was fomenting.

Influential programs such as “Meet The Press” continue to emphasize race by profiling the Zimmerman jury (five jurors were white women) and focusing on the opinion of Al Sharpton and his assumption, without due process, that Zimmerman was guilty. Isn’t Sharpton advocating a return to a racist’s lynch-mob justice?

With obvious rancor from leaders as Sharpton and others, including the “media,” Martin Luther King’s dream that his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” becomes, sadly, just a dream.

Peter L. Williamson

Vancouver