Publisher’s Note

The day after George Zimmerman’s “not guilty” verdict was announced, my 20-year old son Alexander came into my office and asked what happened. ”What does it mean?” he questioned. He was puzzled. He was solemn. He started making general statements about the U.S. Justice system. About Blacks and Whites. And about what it means to be a young Black male in this country at this time. The conversation lasted three hours.
I found myself periodically stopping him. Asking him to question his assumptions and explaining that nothing is just black or white. I told him I believe we all have racial biases. We might not want to admit it, but we do. This country has been built on a hierarchy of race and it has been a part of our nation’s ingrained and seemingly inescapable legacy since its’ founding. We identify people by race. We make judgments about them based on centuries of racial perceptions. Trayvon Martin was a victim of that legacy and so is George Zimmerman. In a way, we all are.
I explained to Alexander that in my opinion once Zimmerman profiled Trayvon, (the judge would not allow the prosecution to use the modifier “racially” with the term “profiled”) and pursued him against the directives of the emergency dispatcher, that he could not claim it was self-defense. Not when as the LA Times’ Robin Abcarian so eloquently put it, “Zimmerman was the architect of the events of the night.” But the case before the jury was confined to Florida laws that require the state to prove in 2nd degree murder or manslaughter cases that the defendant acted with ill-will, spite or hatred, it was supported by a gun culture that allowed a neighborhood watch volunteer to legally carry a concealed weapon, and it was led by a prosecution team that among other things didn’t seem to have properly prepared its witnesses and remarkably agreed to an all female mostly all White jury.
In the end, the jury was asked to answer one question: was George Zimmerman defending himself? And the verdict left me wondering would the outcome have been different if prosecutors presented the case from the perspective of the 17-year old boy, walking in a neighborhood that was not his own, being pursued by a stranger, a stranger who must have seemed anxious, and who must have seemed threatening, perhaps even menacing? And who must have had some sense of security knowing that he had protection tucked away, legally concealed, in the waistband of his pants. And I’m sure the jurors, being human, put themselves in the position of the defendant. He was, after all, the one whose fate was in their hands. I’m sure they thought that if what he was saying was true and if they were in a similar situation, with the young man attacking them, then they would reach for and discharge a weapon if they had one. And evidently, two of the six jurors at one time have had permits to carry concealed firearms.
In an answer to Alexander’s question, in this case the justice system failed Trayvon Martin who became a perpetrator instead of a victim. He was young. He was Black. And to George Zimmerman, and the jury, impelled by the history of racial perceptions that are an undeniable part of our nation’s legacy that, evidently, made him dangerous.