the other day, in the midst of all my Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case posting i was alerted to this message on my good friend and former [and future] tag team buddy Sean Du Toit which simply read:

Everyone’s talking about Zimmerman and Martin, but what about Temar Boggs?

and of course i was all like ‘who the flip is Temar Boggs?’ so i did what all curious and brainy people do in the suchlike of that circumstance and went to go and ask Uncle Google…

i found out that Temar Boggs is a black kid.

a black kid on a bicycle.

with a gang of friends.

that should say it all, right? i can let my prejudice and racial profiling and media stereotypes fill the rest?

as MSNBC reports, ‘Temar Boggs is a 15-year-old student who lives in Lancaster, Pa. He loves playing sports, hanging out with friends, skateboarding and biking.’

oh, and then it continues, ‘Add “being a hero” to the list.’

a different article on the 41 Action News site fills in the other side of the story,

‘Five-year-old Jocelyn Rojas was playing in her front yard in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she vanished Thursday afternoon.

Authorities believe she was abducted by a man who lured her by offering ice cream.

For two hours, neighbors and police scoured the area and asked if anyone had seen her.’

Back to Temar in the first article:

‘Temar was having an average summer day on July 11: he helped a neighbor move her couch, and then settled in to hang out with some friends. But when Temar and friend Chris Garcia heard a five-year old girl had been abducted from their neighborhood, they jumped into action. After locating and chasing down the abductor, they rescued five-year old Jocelyn Rojas and were able to return her safe and sound to her parents.’

The Action News article describes the action:

‘The two teens chased the alleged kidnapper on their bikes for 15 heart-pounding minutes. The driver apparently knew he was being followed and gave up.

“He stopped at the end of the hill and let her out, and she ran to me and said that she needed her mom,” Temar said.’

This is all after they’d spent 30 to 45 minutes looking for her with a group of friends without being able to find anything and then they headed back to the general search area before spotting what they thought was a suspicious looking car.

You can read the rest of the mini interview they did with Temar here. The one question and answer that stood out strongly for me was this one:

‘How do you feel about having saved that girl?

It was just out of heart. It wasn’t to get attention or anything. It was just to help somebody in the community, help make sure another little life was okay and make sure her future could be possible.’


In the light of all the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman conversation this incident brought me great hope as well as great sadness [how come this wasn’t sprayed around all the newspapers and tv bulletins?] and it reminded me of a rather edgy statement joke one of my friends told me once:

Him: What do you call a black man who flies a plane?

Me: I don’t know. What do you call a black man who flies a plane?

Him: A pilot, you racist.

Edgy, I know. And maybe discomfort-enducing. As is this ongoing conversation whether it be focused on stories like Trayvon Martin or like this hero Temar Boggs [who i wish more people had heard more of]. Because the reality of this particular story is that Temar was a kid on a bike who put his hand up when the need presented itself. The fact that he’s a black kid shouldn’t be an issue, but in the climate where the media is so quick to bring race in when it’s a story with a negative twist, then maybe it needs to.

temar

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I celebrate you Temar Boggs. I imagine you are probably not perfect and if we searched through your garbage we might be able to find some stories that would put your character to question in some way. I definitely know that is the case with me and mine. I imagine Jocelyn’s mom doesn’t care so much about that stuff right now though. And neither do i.

And thank you Sean.