Abdul Kebbeh, 6, holds a sign at Westlake Park on Sunday, July 14, 2013 in downtown Seattle. Hundreds of people gathered at Westlake and marched to the United States Court House to protest the acquittal of George Zimmerman. (photo: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com/AP)
16 July 13
Jury verdict not same as moral judgment
he
most important thing about the Zimmerman verdict is that it's a clear
demonstration of how the American legal system is only about law. It is
not about justice. It is not even about the consequences of killing
another person.
The verdict demonstrates that, despite the
protestations of the law that it is about justice, that's only a
pretense to cover the reality: that when the law produces justice, it's a
fluke, an accident, a surprise. The law is only about the law.
And it's no wonder, when you stop to think about who
makes laws and why. Justice is one of the last things on the legislative
mind, if it ever gets there at all.
And so the Zimmerman verdict can be seen as a metaphor
for the American way of life and death these days, a psychic rorschach
blot of our culture, a measure of the zeitgeist in the United States of
Zimmerman, the US of Z.
In the distorting mirror of the Zimmerman verdict we
glimpse all too much of who we are today as a nation - not what each of
us is, nor what all of us are, but an inescapable collage of how
exceptional we are in so many ways of which we should be ashamed. Here's
a sampling of those reflections.
A Rough Guide to Life in the United
States of Zimmerman, the US of Z
States of Zimmerman, the US of Z
In the US of Z the law allows people to hunt each other.
In the US of Z you can be a self-appointed volunteer
vigilante, and you have permission to decide a person is up to no good
based solely on the color of his skin, and maybe the time of day and
your own bigotry.
In the US of Z you may racial profile to your heart's content and the judge won't let it be used against you in court.
In the US of Z, you don't have to feel remorse if you
kill someone, even if that person did nothing wrong, even if you went
out of your way to get to kill him. You can just believe it was God's
plan.
In the US of Z, there is confusion about whether
Trayvon Martin is another Medgar Evers or Emmett Till. He might have
grown up to be a Medgar Evers. He died an Emmett Till.
In the US of Z, the acquittal of someone who stalked
and killed a young black man comes as no surprise. But it's still
surprising that Zimmerman's defense attorney asserted, in all apparent
seriousness, that in the same circumstances, Zimmerman would not even
have been charged if he was black.
In the US of Z, it is no surprise for a black man to
go uncharged when he does not survive his arrest. That's not what the
defense attorney meant, because in the US of Z, it's the killer
Zimmerman who is somehow the victim.
In this US of Z, there are white people who believe
that black people don't care about dead black boys except when whites
kill them.
In this US of Z, people still think it's unfair that
Zimmerman was even arrested 44 days after the killing. They don't
believe that George Zimmerman's father, Robert Zimmerman, a retired
Virginia Supreme Court magistrate, reportedly talked the police out of
arresting George the night he killed Trayvon.
In the US of Z, the Zimmerman verdict no doubt gives
some hope to Michael David Dunn, 45, a Florida white man who killed an
unarmed black teenager in the back seat of a car for having the music
too loud, shooting him at least eight times. Dunn has pleaded not
guilty, saying he felt threatened and acted in self defense, and besides
the law gives him the right to stand his ground.
In the US of Z, having rap music too loud for the guy
who drives up beside you in the parking lot is an even worse offense
than walking home in the rain with Skittles and iced tea while black.
In the US of Z, WWB - Walking While Black - is risky
behavior that sensible people avoid. So is SITBSWB - Sitting in the Back
Seat While Black.
In the US of Z, your older brother can go on TV (CNN)
and trash talk your victim and pretend he's starting a healing dialogue
and the news people will just nod.
In the US of Z your brother's behavior doesn't seem so
odd because your father, the retired Virginia magistrate decided to
publish an e-book right before your trial started, with the title:
"Florida v. Zimmerman - Uncovering the Malicious Prosecution of My Son
George."
In the US of Z, Judge Zimmerman makes clear, among
other things, that in his view the "True Racists" in the US of Z are all
African-American. And the judge names names, including: the
Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, the Black Chamber of Commerce,
the United Negro College Fund, and Trayvon Martin's undertaker.
In the US of Z, someone puts up a "Kill Zimmerman"
page on Facebook that gets more than 7,000 "likes" in just a few hours,
gets reported by an unknown number of people, and doesn't get taken down
right away.
In the US of Z, perhaps counterintuitively till you
think about it, the Zimmerman verdict, like the O.J. verdict, went to
the money side.
In the US of Z there is little appreciation of the dark irony that the Zimmerman verdict was delivered in Seminole County.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience
in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20
years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers
Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life
magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences.
1 comment:
I say we hunt down George Zimmerman and lynch him. I say we do away with the system of law and trial by jury which is so obviously flawed.
This is the only way we will ever have "justice."
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