Of Courage Undaunted

I drove over to Case park today intending to take some photo's to go along with this post. What prompted me to take the extra effort wasn't the senseless murder of Brandon C. Fauntleroy-McDowel, 25, of Raytown. Sadly people being shot and killed over something as insignificant as their car has become so commonplace in this city that it rarely moves me to write about it anymore. The motivating factor in my trip to case park and this post was not the killing of a seemingly promising young man, but the comments his death generated in the Star article written by CHRISTINE VENDEL. I urge anyone who reads this post to link over to that article and peruse the comment section.

A reoccurring theme in those comments was race, the victim was a young black man, and according to the police another young black man was seen leaving the scene of the crime in Brandon's vehicle. There are some blatantly racist comments in response to the Stars article, and those I take with a grain of salt, much like senseless killings, cowardly racist comments posted on the Internet are commonplace. Then their were comments like this one "
Here you have exactly the kind of young man the black community has far too few of, and someone has to go kill him for a stupid Tahoe? This has me wondering if jealousy was a factor in selection of the victim. They need to find this thug and bring him to justice. "
I think the comment was well intended and made by someone who has absolutely no real knowledge of the "Black Community", I could be wrong, but I doubt it.. The inference is that the majority of young african American males are the exact opposite of Brandon. People see glimpses of lives other than their own and they make false assumptions based on 30 second sound bites on the nightly news. My point is that race is always at the forefront of our minds. Race overshadows everything. Sadly, I doubt that things will ever change in respect to race.

Their are two tragedies in the death of Brandon. The first is painfully evident. A life full of hope and promise was snuffed out with no more thought than one would give when blowing out a candle. One minute he was alive the next , gone forever. The second tragedy is the knee jerk reaction most of us had, myself included, when we heard a young black guy was gunned down over a car.

In the end Brandon didn't care if his killer was black or white, and his killer didn't stop long enough to give it any thought either. What matters most is that a life was ended and a family and friends were left to deal with the incomprehensible tragedy of this young mans death.

I never ended up getting out of my car to look for the exact spot Brandon was killed at. The circle parking area was filled with cars , people eating lunch, talking on their phones, it was just life going on, nothing out of the ordinary. It was as if nothing had ever happened. There is a huge bronze statue in the center of the circle, at the base is an inscription, a quote by Thomas Jefferson, I think. And a few words in that inscription is what I chose to include here. " Of Courage Undaunted". Fitting words. More and more it takes courage to live or work in this city where life is so devalued. The people who loved and cared about Brandon will need courage in the days, weeks and months to come. And all of us, regardless of color need courage to look past the surface differences and see the sameness beneath the veneer of pigmentation.