July 17, 2013 at 10:18 A.M. Alterations in spacing and other attempts to deface this text emanating from New Jersey government computers cannot be prevented. I am wearing a hoody as I type these words.
Lizette Alvarez, "Zimmerman Is Acquitted In Trayvon Martin Killing: Florida Jury Finds Him Not Guilty On All Counts in a Racially Charged [sic.] Trial," The New York Times, July 14, 2013, p. A1. (Ms. Alvarez represents the Rubio/Ros-Leghtinen Republicans in South Florida who favor Mr. Zimmerman.)
Carl Dix, "How Long Will This System Continue to Get Away With Murder?," Revolution, July 13, 2013, http://www.revcom.us (Mr. Dix represents President Obama's supporters and most of us of all colors and ethnicities outraged by this verdict.)
Ekow N. Yankow, "The Truth About Trayvon," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, July 16, 2013, p. A23. (Worthy of Bob Menendez: "On the one hand, but on the other hand.")
Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New York: Signet, 2000), pp. 64-85.
The long-awaited decision in the Trayvon Martin case finally arrived. Young Mr. Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted.
I wish I could say that I am surprised or shocked by this outcome. Sadly, it is all-too expected and likely a decision in America's legal system where such murders of young African-Americans are an almost daily phenomenon.
Persons who know my writings are aware that racism in American society and its deeply-flawed legal system are matters of passionate concern for me. ("Trayvon Martin is Another Murdered Child," "So Black and So Blue in Prison," "Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal," then "Foucault, Rose, Davis, and the Meanings of Prison" and "America's Holocaust.")
By commenting on this verdict, I am aware that I risk even more sabotage against these sites and death threats against me, if not my family members -- I hope. The reality revealed in this controversy is sufficiently important that risks must be taken and trouble had better be got into if we are to deal with racism for once.
What this verdict has taught us, yet again, is that millions of Americans live with exactly such lethal threats, tacit and explicit, on a daily basis merely by virtue of their skin color. Millions of African-Americans are threatened by George Zimmerman-types and the culture that excuses and even rewards love of violence and guns in the hands of some of our "sicker white friends," to paraphrase Dr. King.
The Trayvon Martin story will never become the George Zimmerman narrative, despite this acquittal, because there are still so many Trayvon Martins out there -- 1 out of 3 African-American young men will be killed or sent to prison in this country -- which is a situation that can only be described as a Holocaust. ("An Unpleasant Encounter With New Jersey's State Police" and "Albert Florence and New Jersey's Racism.")
It is crucial to remember that this "story" follows upon several centuries of slavery and its legacy, massacres and tortures. The Atlantic ocean contains more than one million Trayvon Martin-like young Africans who never made it to Florida. It is time to speak some of the truths that America refuses to face or acknowledge: We are a profoundly racist society.
The mere fact of dark skin constitutes a crippling injury and deprivation, or the near certainty of murder, or a diminished life in terms of educational, economic, cultural and political opportunities. This truth is overcome in some cases by unusually gifted and fortunate persons (Barack Obama) who are typically well-aware that they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Race simply cannot be removed from the facts in this tragic story. The Florida prosecutors were highly competent and professional attorneys who did a good job of proving their case. Defense counsel were also competent, if less professional and impressive (to me). This verdict was not about the lawyers.
If there was an error by the state in this trial, however, it was the attempt to exclude race from the central issues -- for understandable reasons -- which simply could not be done. Race (not a block of cement) became the elephant in the courtroom which only grew in size by not being mentioned.
Jurors may have felt that they were being manipulated or treated in a condescending manner by lawyers not touching the race issue which is the only way the entire situation makes any sense.
There is simply no other prism through which to view these "events" so as to render them into meaningful "actions" except in terms of race. What occurred on that rainy night of February 26, 2012 in a dark street in Florida is only the latest chapter in America's long racial odyssey. ("The FBI Wants Assata Shakur.")
Here are some undisputed facts not emphasized by commentators I have read on this verdict: 1). On the night in question, Mr. Zimmerman is an adult carrying a concealed firearm; hence, he is held to a higher standard of responsibility under the law and also in reason, where he owes a higher duty of care, in terms of assessing moral blame for what occurred; 2). Trayvon Martin is a child to whom a duty of care is owed by any adult in his proximity in an area within a "reasonable distance" from his home, a child behaving normally, and -- except for his skin color -- one who in no way creates any "reasonable grounds for suspicion of criminal wrongdoing" in the interpretation of a "reasonably objective third-party" observing Trayvon's movements and actions; 3) despite being told by the police not to do so, Mr. Zimmerman chose to follow Trayvon Martin in a manner that the young man, Mr. Martin, could only deem "suspicious."
It follows, logically, that the altercation that took place was INITIATED by Mr. Zimmerman, the armed adult, who must be held responsible for the irrevocable result, as the lead prosecutor argued, the death of a child who was innocent of any crime.
Mr. Zimmerman set out to confront (or shoot) an African-American young man who, in Mr. Zimmerman's own words on the night of the murder, "gets away with things." Mr. Zimmerman had never met Trayvon Martin and he did not have any basis for such a statement: By virtue of being African-American, however, Trayvon Martin simply was "one of those persons" who "gets away" with things for George Zimmerman.
Would Mr. Zimmerman say the same of Justice Clarence Thomas? Does Justice Thomas "get away with things"? It was Mr. Zimmerman's mission that night to ensure -- BEFORE speaking to the young man or figuring out what, if anything, was going on -- that, on this night, Trayvon Martin would not "get away." ("Freedom For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.")
Mr. Zimmerman explained during interviews that he was going to "punish him for it" without explaining what he was punishing or why Mr. Martin should be the recipient of this "punishment." These irrational and bizarre prejudices are obviously shared by many of Mr. Zimmerman's fellow Floridians, some of whom were on his jury.
These words by Mr. Zimmerman that are now part of the record in this matter, I believe, establish premeditation, intent, malice aforethought whether Mr. Zimmerman was consciously aware of his deeper motivations is a separate question.
I suggest that these words, together with the interview granted to Fox News (mistake!), will come back to haunt Mr. Zimmerman in a federal civil rights action alleging deliberate and wilfull violation of Trayvon Martin's civil rights.
Please remember that Mr. Zimmerman will continue carrying a gun. He will continue "patrolling" the streets of "his" community regardless of what the police ask him NOT to do. I am sure that there will be further incidents in Mr. Zimmerman's life similar to the Martin killing.
The number of young men lost to such murders, to self-destruction through the lingering and sometimes subtle effects of racism and cultural dehumanization for young women and men -- dehumanization that serves to reinforce as well as support existing and seemingly invisible hierarchies of power in our society -- is growing by the day. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?")
Generations of children are being lost to this plague or social pathology -- racism. The verdict for Mr. Zimmerman is a verdict against America's Constitutional vision which makes it undeniable that a large portion of our society today likes and will hang-on to its racism:
"The real question in this trial was not murder or 'self-defense.' It was whether the Trayvon Martins of this world have a right to survive, flourish, and to get justice if they're attacked -- or whether the Zimmermans of this world have a supposed right to murder them with impunity. The system has given its answer."
In his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King spoke of the dehumanization that is racism's objectification of persons and he warned, as I am warning now, that all reduction of persons to the status of "things" that are to be controlled or manipulated by self-proclaimed "superiors" is simply evil:
"[Racism] to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for an 'I-Thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence, [racism] is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation." (King, p. 71.)
Ultimately, this "separation" is from oneself, as a person, as or "in" the Other. The separation to which this existential theological tradition refers is a falling away from one's own humanity. ("Dehumanization" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
Mr. Martin was a stranger to Mr. Zimmerman on the night when the boy was murdered. Mr. Zimmerman "set out" to kill the shadow in himself projected on to the dark-skinned "Other" who happened to be Trayvon Martin.
Mr. Zimmerman will continue to project his shadow-self on to African-American strangers strolling about in the evenings and, therefore, "suspicious" to him. Another day will come, soon, when Mr. Zimmerman -- like the section of America that he represents -- will find (once again) in a vulnerable child, the embodiment of irrational fears and imagined threats posed by the vaguely defined "criminals" found in cinema and the evening news that continue to be associated with African-American young people everywhere in this country.
More children will die unless something is done to deal with our racism, hypocrisy, and inequalities in this country and in the world.
