Meting Out Justice

Revealing before a court of justice and a jury considered to be social peers of the accused, the details of evidence brought in a criminal trial resulting from an event that has raised the consciousness and related ire of both sides in a conflicting and ongoing issue of race relations, is the simple fact that race entered the trial unbidden by evidence. But in a confrontation between black and white in America, black sees itself as disadvantaged in any situation. So that even in situations which are person-to-person confrontations, race becomes an issue.

The jury of six women appointed to reach a just determination through their collective opinion resulting from exposure to the arguments and evidence brought forward by a prosecutor, challenged by a defence, reached their decision. And those who believe in the American system of justice believed that the matter was closed. The President of the United States of America declared that "A jury has spoken", and the matter was to be set aside, in the prosecution of George Zimmerman.

This man who was put on trial for second-degree murder was a neighbourhood watch volunteer of partial Hispanic extraction who confronted a young black teen on a dark, wet night inside a Florida gated community, convinced the youth was up to no good. Trayvon Martin had exited a convenience store where he had bought some snack items and was on his way back to the home of his father's girlfriend who lived in the community.

Just as an over-zealous George Zimmerman conceived that Trayvon Martin represented an obvious threat, the young man whose presence disturbed him also felt himself in turn to be in danger, followed by someone he didn't know, and whose purpose he didn't know other than, given the circumstances, must be a sinister one. George Zimmerman acted in a manner that was discouraged by the police with whom he was in telephone contact.

Trayvon Martin reacted in a manner urged upon him by someone with whom he was in excited, fearful telephone contact. He attempted to flee from the scene, only to find that his pursuer fled after him. When they did physically come in contact, Trayvon Martin felt he was fighting for his life, and so did George Zimmerman. George Zimmerman had initiated the situation, furthered it, and then concluded it by shooting to death someone he had no knowledge of

He was the direct cause of the untimely death of a young man. The crime was not racially motivated, but rather caused by suspicion born of thoughts of previous neighbourhood crimes, aided and abetted by bull-headed stupidity. George Zimmerman does bear guilt in the death of Trayvon Martin. But a jury has convinced itself that he was innocent of prior motivation in the death of the young man, that what resulted was spontaneous, and horribly regrettable. Acquitting him of murder.

The long history of racism, intolerance, bigotry, prejudice and discrimination in the United States against its black population, a history rife with humanity-degrading slavery, social indignity, incivility, human rights abuses, rape, lynchings, threats and brutally imposed social segregation which has long since been disavowed has left its festering resentment. People of the ilk of the Reverend Al Sharpton who has proven himself an able counter-racist have been busy stirring the black population to civil protests and violent acts of reprisal.

A current of threat  ripples throughout the country. The reality that within the country there is an underbelly of black youth who are uneducated, wildly uncivil, given to gangs and social deviance in drug dealing and violent crimes, most often taking place within their own communities, goes unremarked upon by either of the sparring communities. The black communities uncertain how to meet the challenge of turning black youth away from crime and violence, the white community unwilling to have charges of racism brandished should they raise the issue too loudly.

Into this toxic mixture comes the ambivalent reaction of the President of the United States of America and his administration. The black community has achieved the pinnacle of attainment and pride by the elevation of one of their own to the stature of the most elite executive administrator in the nation who has surrounded himself in powerful positions with other American blacks. As President of the United States his impressive status has a huge impact on the world at large.

Yet the spectre of past suffering and current slanders refuses to release them from the bonds of their own issues with racism. They see it where it does not exist. And their very own president who presides presumably equally to represent the best interests of all the people who inhabit the country most certainly empathizes with them. He has shared their pain. And he now has spoken in a manner geared to give impetus to the socially destabilizing reaction consuming his country.

"When you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away."
"Trayvon Martin could've been me 35 years ago." President Barack Obama made these statements yesterday, in defence of the nation's black reaction of outrage over the verdict.

"They,  they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't have to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put with every single day of their lives -- although that's what we tell ourselves -- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger."

Sounds like a brooding, petulant, resentful young black man. And it was. Just one of many passages in President Barack Obama's memoirs, Dreams from My Father.