The Trayvon Martin shooting last February has sparked a firestorm of protest across the country as well as a wave of parasites coming out of the woodwork to cash-in on the tragedy, an inexcusable and disgusting consequence.

Since the incident, which took place in the northern Orlando suburb of Sanford, gained momentum in the media, ignorant Facebook posts and conversations have become more and more common. Usually, it’s some sap that is against the amount of attention the story has received.

Facebook posts along the lines of “white people are killed by black people and it goes unreported, but when a white guy kills a black guy it makes the news. And he’s branded racist.” Really? What do you know, anyway?

Yes, Martin was black, but the man who shot him, neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, was Hispanic. Does that throw racism as a cause out the window? No, but it does show how people are ignoring or avoiding the facts to shape the story to their own reality.

This attitude toward unacceptable incidents such as this is divisive and hardly constructive; indeed, it brings us back to the 1950s way of thinking, where men could kill each other and get away with it because they had different skin colors. Isolationist thinking such as this has been, unfortunately, ingrained within all of us, black and white, in one fashion or another. We try to identify with larger issues to have a sense of community and belonging and as a consequence we stick to labels like race, ethnicity and neighborhood while fearing and mistrusting others that do not belong. Trayvon Martin, an innocent 17 year-old boy, was killed because of this mentality.

He was in a racially-mixed, gated community, wearing a hoodie with a bag of skittles and Arizona Tea in hand one his way to visit his father’s fiancée. A few minutes later he was dead, shot through the chest.

In this particular case, we may never know what really happened. Several witnesses have been questioned but the only people that actually saw the dispute and shooting were Martin and Zimmerman.  Unfortunately, Martin will never be able to tell what happened from his point of view, and Zimmerman’s perspective cannot be trusted because he’s trying to avoid jail time. Also, as more details about the case are released, the more complicated it gets and it’s all “he said, she said.” Though the truth may never come to light, we can move forward.

The sad reality of every murder is that they’re essentially statistics, being neither the first nor the last and this case is no exception. But when it does happen again, we cannot point fingers and open old wounds. If you are affected, grieve. If you know someone who is affected, support them and grieve with them; and if you are completely unaffected, respectfully acknowledge what has happened and don’t start a firefight. After all, you don’t know all the details, but you do know how to be a decent human being, don’t you?