It’s extraordinarily difficult for me to reconcile the known facts with the verdict given. Here’s a big white guy with a gun who objects to a skinny black kid with a bag of candy walking in the white guy’s neighborhood. He calls a police 911 dispatcher to tell the cops about the kid, and he’s told “fine, you’ve told us, we’ll do something, now leave it.” Instead of doing that he gets out of his car and starts following the kid. Somehow, something happens which precipitates a fight and in that fight the kid is killed.
Apparently the cops initially felt Zimmerman’s “I was defending myself” claim was good enough to avoid criminal charges, as it took several months before he was arrested and charged. Once he finally was, the usual white-black “dialogue” began in its usual fashion. Then the case was forgotten till the trial began several weeks ago.
It seems to me that when you’ve got a big armed white guy against a skinny unarmed black guy and the black guy ends up shot to death, it’s pretty clear who did what to whom. I don’t know whether the defense lawyers were exceptionally good or the prosecution was exceptionally bad, but the jurors surely saw something different than I did.
I said this yesterday and I meant it:
It's not just the cops who can tase and kill people with impunity now, it's wannabe cops who are neighborhood watchers too. Good to know.
— Steve Timberlake (@Linkmeister) July 14, 2013
FYI, Zimmerman is Hispanic. He wasn’t arrested until the national media picked up the story.
Between the bad drivers and the lunatic vigilantes with guns, Florida is becoming a really dangerous place.
Yeah, I know he’s Hispanic, but that was incidental. If his name had been Rodriguez or Gonzales . . . it might be an interesting thought experiment.
Who is the racist now?
Not me. I’m just wondering how much frothing the right would have done if he had had an obvious Hispanic surname. I suspect it would have been more like “Meh. What’s the big deal, a brown guy shooting a black guy?”
My first instinct was that this was not a racist act. Zimmerman would have done the same thing if the kid were black, brown, yellow, red, white or blue. The true crime was his over-zealous pursuit that started the whole thing (yes, I know it’s not against the law to provoke a fight, then shoot someone in self defense).
But then I imagined, “What if Zimmerman were black and Martin were white?” You don’t think the howls of outrage against this black man stalking a white kid coming home from the 7-11 would have been deafening? That’s the true racist component of this. Zimmerman may not have profiled Martin or intended to kill him. He may be just a law-abiding citizen who tried to prevent some kid from mischief and got in over his head. The jury certainly thought there wasn’t enough evidence to prove otherwise. The real problem I have with this whole thing on a racial level is our reaction to it. The assumptions you instantly form in your head about a black kid and whether he deserved to get shot vs. the same incident happening to a white kid.
Zimmerman was cleared of wrongdoing in court. Fine. Leave him alone. It’s not the time to attack him. It’s the time to attack laws that allow a guy to carry a gun and stalk people. And it’s time to attack our own prejudices about the people being stalked.
I could have left race out of the first sentence in the third paragraph up there and I’d still feel the same.
“when you’ve got a big armed guy against a skinny unarmed guy and the unarmed guy ends up shot to death . . .”
ALEC and the NRA ought to be held accountable for these stupid “Stand Your Ground” and “a gun in every pocket” laws, that’s for damned sure. They won’t be, but they should.
As usual, Steve, you said what I think. I’m a bit late to comment, because I’m on vacation. Sadly, the rest of my “family” was delighted with the verdict.