On the morning of December 7, when I left for my job as a teacher, I dressed for a funeral. Part way through my day, I left my living, energetic students to go say a final goodbye to someone their same age. My former student Martinez Smith-Payne was shot and killed by a man who caught Martinez and two friends going through his car.
Reading the news for details, I found that his death was met with a growing number of comments proclaiming that he got what he deserved. In response to those comments, I wrote a post on Facebook that spread much further than I anticipated.
“Last night one of my former students was shot and killed. He and two friends were going through someone’s car and someone caught them and shot at them, killing my student,” my original post read.
“I know I shouldn’t read the comments, but some part of me wanted to know for sure. Maybe I hoped that with a kid I know, a kid in this city, people would at least feel a little bit of sadness. No. With only one exception every single person felt his death was justified. They judge him and his mother without any attempt to see them as people or to see the broader context.
“They don’t know that this child was a pretty tiny 13-year-old with fairly severe learning issues. They didn’t see how excited he got when I solved a Rubik’s cube for him. They didn’t hear how sweet he was when you worked with him one-on-one. They didn’t see his mom coming to meetings to help us figure out how best to help him and crying because she loved him and wanted the best for him.
“Kids do things they shouldn’t. Our job is to help them make better choices, not to kill them when they make mistakes.”
Since that initial post, teachers and parents from across the country have reached out to me, sharing their own stories of loss. They show how much compassion there is in our country for the kids who have died and for their families. But for the most part, those aren’t the responses Martinez’s family hears. In their grief, they hear the world telling them he deserved to die.
Teenagers aren’t known for their ability to think through situations and make rational decisions. Developmentally, they are more impulsive than adults and more likely to engage in dangerous activity. Yet many commenters assume that Martinez’s childhood decisions lit a clear path to his adulthood worth to society.
In the upper-class, almost entirely white middle and high school I attended, my classmates shoplifted, did and sold drugs (including some much stronger than marijuana), hosted parties full of underage drinking and drove drunk. Many of those same young criminals are now doctors, lawyers, educators and excellent parents. Most people assumed we would outgrow our poor decision-making, go to college, and have decent lives. Martinez, and so many like him, have been met with more harmful assumptions.
When we choose to share our views, we have an impact beyond what we immediately see. A comments section full of hatred toward a dead child and his family makes more of us feel comfortable expressing similar feelings. When no one calls us out on our flawed assumptions, they become cemented.
What might have been possible for Martinez in a world that would see him as fully human with dreams, fears, gifts and flaws? A world that would meet his death with outrage and compassion, rather than smug satisfaction and even glee?
It’s a long and overwhelming fight to end poverty, racism and violence, but maybe we can start with the very basic step of not celebrating or excusing the death of another black child.
Leah Patriarco teaches at South City Prep.
