Racism, history and Zimmerman’s acquittal

I’m a white man who considers himself a liberal.   Striving to make a measured judgment, I saw George Zimmerman as irresponsible, reckless and prejudiced, but not a cold-blooded killer, and that, given the law, his acquittal was probably the correct verdict.

Many black Americans, unlike me, do not see Zimmerman as an isolated individual.  They see the killing of Trayvon Martin as part of a long-established pattern of white people killing black people with impunity.

A century ago, in the part of Florida where the killing took place, it was taken for granted that any armed white man had the right to kill any black person for insolence, no questions asked.  Sanford is one of the towns described in Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Sons, from which black men who displeased powerful white people had to flee for their lives.

Down into the 20th century, central Florida was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan.  In 1945, the town refused to allow a Dodgers farm team to conduct spring training because the black player Jackie Robinson was participating.

In 1951, Harry Tyson Moore, a brave black man who belonged to the NAACP, fought barriers to black voting, sought equal pay for black teachers and investigated lynchings, was murdered by a fire bomb.  Florida reportedly had the nation’s highest rate of lynchings on a per capital basis.  Nobody was ever arrested, but the state of Florida in 2006 concluded that the Ku Klux Klan was responsible.

It is true that present-day residents of Sanford are not individually responsible for that history.  But the heritage of the past lingers on.  White people still kill black people and get off.  The right to stand your ground is not extended to black people.  A black woman with no criminal record was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing warning shots to defend herself against an abusive husband.

What I’m trying to say, in my muddled way, is that the George Zimmerman verdict should not distract attention from the fact that the United States does not provide equal justice for black and white Americans, but that this fact does not in and of itself mean that Zimmerman should have been found guilty.

The innocence of George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman was trouble looking to happen.   Without any authorization from anybody, he took it upon himself to acquire a pistol with hollow-point bullets, and go around his neighborhood stalking suspicious characters.  If he hadn’t happened to run into Trayvon Martin on that fatal night, it is highly possible his irresponsible behavior would have led to the death of someone else.

However, that was not what the jury was asked to decide.  Nor was the jury asked to decide whether Florida’s “stand your ground” law should be repealed, or whether white racism is prevalent in the United States, or whether press coverage of the case was biased, and in what direction.

The question before the jury was whether the prosecution had proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Zimmerman was guilty of murder.   If not, he was entitled to the presumption of innocence, like any other American criminal defendant, and that is what the jury gave him.   Of course they did not have the opportunity to hear the testimony of Trayvon Martin.  That is the disadvantage of being dead.  You don’t get to tell your side of the story.

When I originally posted about the case, the thing that bothered me was that, initially, the Sanford, Fla., police didn’t think the case was worth investigating.   I am sure that if I had been found in my neighborhood here in Rochester, N.Y., with a pistol in hand, standing over a dead body, and told the police that it was self-defense, they would not have taken my word for it without investigating further.  And if Trayvon Martin had been armed, and had been found standing over the body of George Zimmerman, I doubt they would have taken his word for what happened, either. 

I got my wish.  The case was investigated, prosecuted and tried, and now the jury has spoken.   If I had been on the jury, I probably would have decided the case the same way.   That doesn’t mean I think George Zimmerman was in the right.

The meaning of the Zimmerman trial

Click on Candorville daily comics for more Darrin Bell cartoons.

Racial profiling and the Trayvon Martin killing

Is George Zimmerman a racist?  In my opinion (1) probably not, and (2) it’s irrelevant to the question of his guilt or innocence.

Murdering someone because of their race is a hate crime.  But being racist is not in itself a crime.  In a free country, people are not put on trial for their attitudes, or for what people think about their attitudes, but when they are accused breaking laws on the statue books.  I can imagine someone being an avowed racist, yet having the good judgment not to go around with a loaded gun playing policeman.  The issue in the Trayvon Martin killing is whether George Zimmerman was legally justified in taking a human life.

George Zimmerman

There was a time within living memory when a black man in communities such as Sanford, Fla., could be killed with impunity for speaking disrespectfully to a white person.  I remember the case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy who was killed in 1955 in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman, and how the all-white jury acquitted the killers because they thought that was justifiable grounds for homicide.

I don’t believe the killing of Trayvon Martin was anything like this.  But I do believe that if it had been me, a 75-year-old white man, wandering through a gated community in Sanford, Fla., on the night of Feb. 26, instead of a 17-year-old black youngster, I would still be alive.  And if by chance it was my life that had been taken, I believe the local police would have been quick to treat it as a crime.

There are statistical disparities between how the criminal justice system treats white and black people, but they aren’t always what I would think.   The law comes down much harder on black people for victimless crimes such as drug abuse.  Surveys indicate that black and white people use illegal drugs in roughly the same percentages, but the overwhelming majority of people in prison for using illegal drugs are black.  But when it comes to crimes of violence, the important variable is the race of the victim, not the accused.  Black murderers of black people are treated more leniently on average than white murderers of white people.  But the small number of black murderers of white people are treated more harshly on average than the smaller number of white murderers of black people.

Trayvon Martin

My guess is that this goes back to the days of slavery and segregation, when white law enforcement officers didn’t care whether black people killed each other, and in the deep South thought that it was justified to kill black people to keep them in line.  Old attitudes persist, even among people who’ve forgotten the reason for them.

It is all too easy to jump to conclusions about other people.  There is a young black man who was a member of my church, an “A” student and an outstanding athlete.  He went to State University College at Albany on a football scholarship.  He was young giant, and at SUNY Albany was given a special diet and body-building exercises to build him up further.  He was quiet and good-tempered, nicknamed the “gentle giant” by his high school classmates.  Yet if I had met him on the street in a bad section of town at night, and not known who he was, I don’t know what I would have felt.

Many black parents try to teach their children how to appear nonthreatening to white people.  They see every encounter with authority as a potential life-threatening situation.  And if you read about all the cases where black men are shot and killed by police by mistake, you see this is not an overreaction.  Not that George Zimmerman had the authority of a law enforcement officer.  He was just a guy with a gun.

I am fortunate to have had parents who taught me to judge people as individuals, not by race, religion and nationality.  Like most human beings, I have my biases, conscious and unconscious, but I try not to let my judgments and actions be controlled by these biases.

Click on George Zimmerman: Prelude to a shooting for a sympathetic portrait of George Zimmerman by Reuters news service.

Click on Are We Teaching Kids the Wrong Lesson About Trayvon? for an argument that what’s needed is not for black parents to talk to their children about how to navigate racial prejudice, but for white parents to have conversations with their children about why racism is morally wrong and intellectually untenable.   I count myself fortunate that my own parents brought me up to judge people as individuals, and not on the basis of race, religion or nationality.   That doesn’t make me free of prejudice, conscious and unconscious.  It means I’ve been taught to try to overcome prejudice.

Click on Race plays complex role in Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law for the Tampa Bay Times analysis of fatal shootings under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which says that people have a right to use deadly force to defend themselves even if they could have avoiding the confrontation by retreating.  The newspaper found that killers of black people were treated more leniently more often than killers of white people, but there are other factors that may have explained this.

Click on Trayvon Martin’s Death, and What It Says About Race, Privilege and Homicide for interesting statistics from the CrimeDime web log.  These figures do not, however, prove what CrimeDime thinks they prove.  The comment thread is as interesting as the post.

Click on Sanford, Florida’s Long Troubled History of Racism and Racial Injustice for background on hate crimes in that community, including running Jackie Robinson out of town.  I think many black people and few white people are familiar with this background, and this may explain why black and white people respond on average so differently.  Of course this is neither here nor there concerning George Zimmerman’s guilt or innocence.

Click on The Murder of Emmett Till for background on that case.  I don’t think this is something that could happen today.

Did Trayvon Martin stand his ground?

This chart is the result of an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times of recent killings in Florida in which the right to stand your ground was asserted as a defense.

The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman is in one respect typical of the cases in which the “stand your ground” defense is invoked.   Someone with a gun claimed the right of self-defense against someone who was unarmed.

An analysis of 192 Florida homicide cases in which the “stand your ground” defense was invoked indicates that in at least 135 cases, the victim was unarmed, and in at least 121 cases, the killer had a firearm.   But the killers did not have to prove they were in physical danger.  All they had to do was to make the case that they thought they were in physical danger.  Maybe the deceased also thought they were in danger.  But they’re dead.  They don’t get to give to give their side of it.

I don’t deny there is a right to self-defense, nor to know which of these cases really were self-defense.  But it is hard to believe that so many people with guns were put in fear of their lives by people who were unarmed.

George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman reportedly had a broken nose and abrasions on the back of his head and Martin reportedly had abrasions on his knuckles.  There must have been some struggle between the two, and it is possible that George Zimmerman thought that Trayvon Martin threatened his life.  But Ta-Nehisi Coates thinks it also is quite possible that Trayvon Martin thought he was threatened by a scary guy who’d been following him in a van and on foot, and decided to stand his ground.  I think so, too, although of course I have no way of knowing.  Only two people knew the full story, and only one survived to tell his version.

Click on Stand Your Ground and Trayvon Martin and Trayvon Martin Update for the thoughts of Ta-Nehisi Coates on his web log for The Atlantic.  The comment threads on these two posts are worth reading.  Here’s one comment.

I have two nephews, a little younger than Trayvon.  If they were walking home, by themselves, in the dark, I would have always counseled them to avoid strangers, to definitely avoid talking to, answering questions from, or engaging with strangers, to try to get away from any stranger who appears to be behaving in an odd or threatening manner, and, if all else fails, to fight that stranger like hell.

Almost every defense I’ve seen of Zimmerman talking about how he had a right to be in a public space, to walk where he wanted, and so on, is true, but it overlooks just how terrifying that behavior is, and how many of us have been trained ourselves and have trained others to fear confrontations with strangers and to assume the worst of anyone we don’t know who would approach us in the dark (and for good reasons).

Even if Zimmerman’s account is fairly accurate, it sounds like it would be terrifying to be in Martin’s position. I don’t see how people can’t see how scary Zimmerman’s behavior was BY HIS OWN ACCOUNT.  Even if he had a legal right to do it, I’m baffled that people don’t see how terrifying and threatening it was.  It is literally the nightmare stranger-danger scenario we warn kids about.

What advice should I give my nephews about avoiding a situation like this?  Cooperate with the stranger?  That seems even worse. I don’t know.  The whole thing just leaves me distraught.

via Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Click on Stand your ground law, Trayvon Martin and a shocking legacy for an analysis by the Tampa Bay Times of homicides in which the “stand your ground” defense was invoked.

Click on Florida’s ‘stand your ground law yields some shocking outcomes depending on how the law is applied for more analysis by the Tampa Bay Times.

Can George Zimmerman get a fair trial?

I think it is a good thing, and not a bad thing, that the killing of Trayvon Martin is a national news story.   If it weren’t, the whole case might have been brushed under the rug.

But George Zimmerman is entitled to a fair trial, in which he is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  And both he and we, the people, are entitled to accurate news coverage, which we have not always got.

It would have been despicable of Spike Lee and Rev. Al Sharpton to publish George Zimmerman’s address even if they hadn’t published the wrong address and subjected an innocent person to harassment.  It is wrong that Zimmerman has to go into hiding—although Trayvon Martin’s family might say that this is better than being dead.

A criminal trial is not a good place to resolve complex social issues.  Racial profiling is a serious problem, Florida’s stand-your-ground law is a serious problem.  But when George Zimmerman goes to trial, the only issue to be tried is whether the prosecution can prove he is guilty of second-degree murder.

Many legal experts doubt that there is a case for a second-degree murder conviction.  Second-degree murder is an intentional but unplanned killing, or assault in which the death of the victim was a distinct possibility.  They argue there would be a stronger case for a lesser charge, such as manslaughter or assault.  Here in New York, there is a crime called “reckless endangerment.” which might fit.

What I wanted to see in the case, and what I now do see, is for the law to treat the killing of a young man as a serious matter.  I am willing to let a judge and jury decide whether Zimmerman has committed a crime or deserves to be punished.  I just want him to be held accountable for what he did.

Click on The Zimmerman Case: Reactions for a roundup by The Agitator of lawyers’ comments on the indictment.

Click on Altering the Zimmerman Tape for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ comment on NBC’s doctoring the tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call to make Zimmerman appear racially prejudiced.

Click on The Trayvon-Industrial Complex for a post about the exploitation of the Trayvon Martin killing by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative.  The comment thread is well worth reading.

Click on Trayvon Martin Photos for Snopes.com’s report on bogus photos of Trayvon Martin being circulated on the Internet by Zimmerman supporters.  Click on Koch Plays George Zimmerman’s Legal Fees? for Snopes.com’s exposure of another false rumor.  These may be just the tip of the iceberg of false information circulating in the Internet.

As usual, it is the victim that is on trial

Back in the 1960s, I covered murder trials as a reporter for The Daily Mail in Hagerstown, Md.   In none of this trials was there any question of who the killer was.   The argument for the defense was that the deceased brought his fate on himself, for being an abusive husband,  an abusive parent or something else intolerable.  The juries were almost always sympathetic, and the killer usually was either acquitted or treated with extreme leniency.  I thought the result was probably right, but I would have liked to have heard the victim’s side of the story.  That is one of the disadvantages of being dead.  You don’t get to tell your side of the story.

That is what is happening in the Trayvon Martin case.  The victim is being put on trial.  And he doesn’t get to tell his side of the story.

Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old boy who lived in a gated community in Sanford, Florida.  One night he went out on an errand.  On the way home he was seen by an armed Neighborhood Watch volunteer named George Zimmerman, who thought his behavior was suspicious.  He called 911 and, despite explicitly being told not to do so, started stalking Martin in his van.  Martin at the time was talking to his girlfriend on a cell phone about some strange character following him.  Zimmerman got out of his van, there was some sort of confrontation, Zimmerman was seen holding Martin down on the ground, and Martin was shot dead.  Martin himself was unarmed.

The significance of Martin being black is that this happens so often to black people, including teenagers and young children.  Because it is a pattern, black people across the United States are naturally up in arms about the case.  But to many white people, the greater issue and the greater injustice is white people being accused of racism.

As always happens in such cases, there has been a concerted effort to dig up dirt on Martin.  The worst thing that has surfaced is that Martin was suspended from school, reportedly for being in possession of an empty marijuana baggy.   If true, this does not, alas, make him different from other teenagers these days.

Click on What Everyone Needs to Know About the Smear Campaign Against Trayvon Martin for more about this.

This just in:  The Orlando Sentinel reported this morning that Zimmerman told police that Martin jumped up, cold-cocked him with one blow and started hammering his head against the ground before he pulled his gun and shot him.   I will be interested to see if any eyewitnesses confirm this.   It seems improbable that a teenager, with no history of violence, would jump a man 10 years older and 10050 pounds heavier for no real reason.  It seems more likely that the chaser, rather than the chase-ee, would be the aggressor.  As I said, Trayvon Martin isn’t around to give his version of the story.

Click on Zimmerman says Travon decked him with one blow, then began hammering his head for a  report on what Zimmerman reportedly told police.

[Afterthought]  Even if the facts were partly or wholly as Zimmerman reportedly said, that does not close the case, in my opinion.  As Ta-nehisi Coates said, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law allows a person who feels threatened to shoot without waiting for the other person to shoot first.  Trayvon Martin had good reason to feel threatened.  Should he have waited for the other person to throw the first punch?  But of course there is no way to ask him what he was thinking.

[Update 3/29/12]  The police video of George Zimmerman appears to contradict the account he allegedly gave to police.  Click on New Video of George Zimmerman at the Police Station for details.

The facts of the case would be better determined in a court of law than by me and others publishing dueling sets of leaked information.  My excuse for doing this is that the case may well never reach a court of law.

[Update 3/31/12]  Forget what I wrote above about the police video.   Click on Who Needs Journalism: MSNBC Broadcasts a New Clearer Tape for the reason.

Click on The Danger of Rushing to Judgment on George Zimmerman for some words of wisdom.

Florida law and George Zimmerman’s impunity

The Trayvon Martin case involves the shooting of a young black man by a young white man, and the failure of the white-run Southern police department to take any action against the killer.  The more evidence comes out, the less defensible and more bigoted the police department’s attitude seems. … …  My feeling is the same as when I wrote about the Troy Davis execution last fall: this case is obviously about race, and is important on those grounds.  Race relations are after all the original and ongoing tension in U.S. history.  But it is also about self-government, rule of law, equality before the law, accountability of power, and every other value that we contend is integral to the American ideal … …

via James Fallows.

George Zimmerman

Many commentators and bloggers speculate that George Zimmerman, the Neighborhood Watch guy in Florida who killed the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, will claim justification under Florida’s new expansive self-defense law.

Historically the right to claim self-defense as a basis for justifiable homicide required you to show that you had taken other reasonable actions, including backing way from the situation, to protect your life.  Florida’s expanded law, according to various bloggers and commentators, expands that right.  You have the right to stand your ground, and still use deadly force if you feel in danger.

In Florida you may kill anyone who’s not in an iron lung machine, or comatose, at will, as long as you do it with no-one else around and you are willing to say you were scared of your victim at the time.  Really.  You can probably shoot him in the back if you say you thought he was going for a piece tucked in his belt. … … George Zimmerman, who apparently spent night after night out and about with his 9mm burning a hole in his pocket, finally got to use it for what it’s supposed to do.  I’m aware of no statement of regret from Zimmerman, and it appears that he’s in good shape legally, at least for now.

via The Reality-Based Community.

The thing about this right is that it can be claimed only by the shooter, never by the victim.   George Zimmerman, the gun-toting Neighborhood Watch volunteer, who killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager did not grant Martin any right to stand his ground.  Neither did he grant him any right to retreat from the situation, nor to move forward.   Any of these actions could be been deemed evidence of guilt.

Martin would have been better off if he had carried a concealed weapon, and shot Zimmerman before Zimmerman shot him. He undoubtedly would have been put on trial (whether Zimmerman will be is doubtful), but he would at least have been able to tell his side of the story.   That is one of the legal disadvantages of being a homicide victim.  Your killer gets to tell his side of the story, but you do not.

I have read comment on the Internet pointing out that there is no proof that Zimmerman acted out of racial prejudice, or arguing that since he is of Hispanic heritage, he can’t be racist.  The issue becomes not whether there was any reason to shoot an unarmed 17-year-old boy, but whether he would have been as prone to shoot a white boy as a black boy.

I never heard of a Neighborhood Watch volunteer carrying a concealed weapon.  None of the Neighborhood Watch in my own neighborhood do, and, even though I am white, I would feel uneasy if they did.  I believe there is a Second Amendment individual right to keep and bear arms, and an inherent right to self-defense, but with those rights go responsibilities.

It is of course impossible to know what Zimmerman thinks or feels in his heart.  All we can know is what he did.  You can’t change the hatred and prejudice that people feel in their hearts.  You can change the law that says, basically, that you can kill somebody with impunity if there are no witnesses and you are willing to say you are scared.

People who endanger or take innocent life should face consequences.  I believe that anybody who takes a human life with a firearm, intentionally or accidentally, whether wearing a badge or not, should forfeit the right to ever touch a firearm again, unless they were defending themselves or someone else against an actual clear and present danger.

Click on Suspicion.  Paranoia.  Murder. for an excellent summary of the case on the Psychopolitick web log.

Click on Stand Your Ground and Vigilante Justice for comment on the Florida law by Ta-nehisi Coates.

Click on The Trayvon Martin Case for the full comment by James Fallows.

Click on A gun is to shoot and, in Florida, “the rules are different here” for the full comment by Michael O’Hare on The Reality-Based Community web log.

Trayvon Martin: the perils of being black

Years ago I had a conversation with a black guy who worked in Democrat and Chronicle news library about all the forethought he gave to what he would do when encountering a police officer, so that the officer would not become nervous and kill him.  The situation of greatest peril, he said, was when he happened to be in an all-white suburb, where the presence of a black person was automatically regarded with suspicion.

Trayvon Martin

I recalled that conversation when I read about the killing of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who was peaceably walking in his own neighborhood, by George Zimmerman, an armed Neighborhood Watch volunteer, apparently for no reason except Zimmerman’s unfounded suspicions.

A black man who lives in the same gated community said he never walks around in his own neighborhood, precisely for fear of meeting up with somebody like Zimmerman.  He told an interviewer he takes all his walks downtown.

Geraldo Rivera wrote a column saying that Travyon Martin brought his killing on himself for wearing a hooded garment, because so many black criminals wear hooded garments.  He said Zimmerman is to blame for being reckless, but Martin also is to blame for being unwise in his choice of outerwear.

Think about this.  You have equal blame for a trigger-happy guy who kills a decent young teenager for no apparent reason, and the teenager for failing to read the trigger-happy guy’s mind and acting accordingly.

I don’t like the expression “white privilege,” because I think being able to peaceably go about your business is a right, not a privilege, but, being white, I’ve never thought my life was in peril every time I had an encounter with police authority.

A blogger named Matt Johnsen put it this way

The Thinking Viking is a taller than average, usually well-groomed white man of 40, weighing in at 175 lbs.   About as far as you can get from a slender 17-year-old black teenage boy, 140 pound 6’3″ Trayvon Martin, aside from our gender and being tall.   I’m wearing a freaking hoodie as I type, I own four of them, three black, one grey.   I wear one almost daily as I walk to the store a couple blocks away.  The rent-a-cops in my neighborhood are all – so far as I have seen – Hispanic or Black.  If one of them had shot and killed me while I was walking home, talking to my girlfriend on the phone, I can assure you, they’d be in jail – or at least charged formally – by now. The man – George Zimmerman – who stalked and murdered Trayvon Martin has not been charged, and is walking around a free man.

Anyone who thinks this isn’t racially motivated isn’t seeing things clearly.  As for the Stand Your Ground law he is using as his defense?  You cannot claim self-defense if you follow a total stranger in your car and then confront them after being told by 911 dispatch to stand down, wait for the real cops. Would he have done this if a 40-year-old white man had been with Trayvon? I doubt it.

But I will tell you this.

If I had been followed by an unmarked car with some strange dude in it, clearly watching me, I would have run or at least hurried, as Trayvon did.  And if that car had followed me all the way home, and the driver confronted me, he would have been met by a few things a lot more dangerous to him than than a bag of Skittles.

A camera, a gun, and my phone dialing 911.

via The Thinking Viking.

Click on Toward justice for Trayvon Martin—and for all children for reactions of parents of black children, including President Obama.

Click on On the Police ‘Investigating’ the Killing of Trayvon Martin for the source of the statement by the black man who takes all his walks downtown.

Click on Trayvon Martin Would Be Alive But For His Hoodie for Geraldo Rivera’s column.

Click on Walking While Black—On Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman for Matt Johnsen’s full post, including a picture of Johnsen in his hoodie.

Click on the Trymaine Lee and Ta-Nehisi Coates web logs for many good posts on the Trayvon Martin killing.