Reason First: How Far Does White Privilege Go?- The Martha Moxley Murder

The written word has power. Dominick Dunne’s A Season in Purgatory (1993), a fictional account of the Martha Moxley Murder, reopened eyes to a cold case. Yet, even before the ink dried on this work of literature, two police officers named Steve Carrol and Frank Garr and a reporter named Leonard Levitt suspected Michael Skakel of the crime.

Throughout the years, paroles, appeals, and trials have arisen to either fight for Skakel’s freedom or to further condemn him. In actuality, in 2002, nearly twenty-seven years after the murder, the jury found him guilty and Skakel received a sentence of 20 years to life.

The question here is whether the police work and the author and producers behind television programs pushed for Skakel to be the culprit.

On mischief night in 1975, 15-year-old Moxley received stab wounds and had been bludgeoned to death with a golf club. The authorities performed an analysis which placed the source of the murder weapon at the Skakel household.

In time, brother to Michael Skakel, Thomas had been looked at as a suspect as well. By the following year, the family stopped aiding the police, citing that the two young men had nothing to do with the murder.

Some context is needed here. The Skakel family is a wealthy clan. They have ties to the Kennedys and wanted for nothing their entire lives. While it would be easy (and untrue) to paint their portrait as having “white privilege” the fact remains that no one can escape the clutches of the law no matter how rich a family happens to be or their skin color.

Michael Skakel spent time in prison and then was released on a $1.2 million bail with an ankle monitor and instructions to inform the authorities if he planned to leave the state of Connecticut.

Skakel would then be returned to prison as the Connecticut Supreme Court voted to reinstate his conviction.

Through all of this, it appears as if a boy born with a silver spoon in his mouth became a young man and then a monster. This has nothing to do with alleged white privilege, which is a myth or something lower. It sets up in the mind that all whites, especially the well-off, can commit crimes and with enough money thrown at the case, and the complexion for protection for collection, can escape justice. Obviously this did not become of Michael Skakel as he served some time in prison.

The draw is the white flesh and the green money that sometimes crop up in a case like this. There is a mentality that just because one man decided to extinguish the life of a young girl, then all wealthy whites, especially men, are inclined to do unspeakable evil.

The white privilege is the same as the black, brown, red, or yellow lie. It only denigrates the mind of the individual. That disrespect to the mind is a case of complete racism and classism. To say that an individual is guilty because of his chemical makeup or his source of funds is a disturbing way to evaluate someone.

Overwhelming evidence like his placement at the crime as described on an audiotape supposedly damned Skakel. It wasn't his fortune or “prestige” that sent him to prison, but his own supposed unselfish and vicious actions.

White privilege is the weakest argument because it doesn’t have any basis in reality. The truth is that Skakel apparently murdered Moxley because of rage and injustice. The young girl did not deserve her fate. But it was not at the hands of someone who held the misnomer and anti-concept white privilege.

Rather, Moxley perished at the hands of an alleged, pernicious murderer named Michael Skakel. Though he had the money and ties to a name that recalls a New England fortune, none of these things precipitated the dastardly actions of Skakel.

In the time between Moxley’s murder and the upheld convictions, Skakel could have further detailed his involvement in the case. Was that white privilege at work? No. This was simply the disastrous mind of an alleged killer who stole the life of an innocent.

Privilege should be barred from all conversations including the paler nation. Without the cash and the ties to the Kennedys, would the same outcome have occurred? Remember, Skakel was found guilty of the crime but is now a free man.

Money and “prestige” don’t apply to a nation of laws and not of men. Justice doesn’t care if you can’t rub two quarters together and descend from African slaves in America. Justice could care less if your family held hundreds of millions of dollars and your skin looked like baking soda.

Justice is only concerned with picking out those people who run afoul of the law. And Skakel, allegedly, showed just that.