Hulk Hogan was awarded $115 million after Gawker released a secretly recorded sex tape in which Hogan was a participant. Erin Andrews was awarded $55 million by a jury after some pervert found out where her room was and drilled a hole in the wall and recorder her while she was changing. Paul Walker’s daughter was paid $10.1 million by the estate of the man who was driving the car that Walker was riding in at the time of his death.
Yet…
Now, I am not saying that those mentioned above do not deserve the money they received. I think they should get every penny that is owed to them. Hogan lost endorsements and his job with the WWE as a result of the tape. Ms. Andrews is scared every time she checks into a room, and endured a humiliating invasion of privacy. Paul Walker’s daughter lost a father.
But look at those numbers – $115 million, $55 million, and $10 million. Now compare that with $6 million. $6 million is a lot of money, but it isn’t simply a payoff. It isn’t a “sorry for your loss, here’s a gift.” It is meant to be an acknowledgement – the Cleveland Police Department killed a boy playing with a toy gun, even after being told that it probably wasn’t a real weapon and that he was probably a juvenile. Call it racism, call it poor training, call it whatever. The fact is a boy that had the world in front of him was killed, leaving a mother to mourn her child. For those who believe that racism doesn’t exist in America, check out what many are saying about Tamir’s mother. And people wonder why the #BlackLivesMatter movement continues to gain momentum.
The point is not that these people were paid too much. In fact, I think Ms. Andrews deserves more. But so does Tamir’s mother. We are a free market society, and a sign of how much we value something is how much we are willing to spend on it. Why is the #BlackLivesMatter movement important? Because apparently society values a person’s reputation more than it values the life of a black child. And until that changes, there is work to be done.