On the night of 26 February 2012, Trayvon Martin, seventeen at the time, was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida. In the course of the investigation it was quickly discovered that Martin was unarmed when he was killed by George Zimmerman, a police-sanctioned neighborhood watch volunteer. Zimmerman’s trial would eventually call into question the complexities of Florida’s stand-your-ground laws as well as the broader racial climate of the United States. Outrage sparked by Martin’s premature death conjured the intimacies of racism – the moment in which we learn we are black, the moment we understand that being black is wicked, and the constant reminders of precarious life. Unsurprisingly, the discursive thrust attending to racialized violence was met with oppositional support for Zimmerman who received an outpouring of compassion. The role of social and mainstream media after Martin’s death exposed (for those not already aware) the underbelly of race relations in the United States in arguably unprecedented ways. It allowed, on one hand, a viral community to erupt, arguing that the injustice of Martin’s death was not new (rather, history was repeating itself), and on the other, the relegation of Martin to an animal in attempts to devalue his life. Sup- porters of Zimmerman argued that the shooting was not motivated by race, as Zimmerman himself is not white. The assumption within these sentiments illuminated the particulars of anti-black racism that is often ignored under the larger rubric of race and racism, and are underscored by the mobilization of the animal that freshens the wounds of slavery, segregation, and animacy hierarchies.