Thoughts on the Zimmerman verdict

     Though a few days late, I thought I would put into words some of the things I've been thinking about the Zimmerman verdict from the perspective of having done research on justice for the past 6 weeks. Here it is:

Based on the evidence, I don't think that Zimmerman is guilty of murder in legal terms. Do I think one could make the case that he committed manslaughter? Probably. I also think that if Trayvon Martin had been a white teenager, he would probably be alive today. If George Zimmerman had been black, I have a very hard time believing he would not have been convicted. 

     Was justice done?

     I'm not particularly inclined to think so, but I don't think that convicting Zimmerman of murder and sending him to jail would have done much more, if anything, to serve justice. At the end of the day, a 17-year-old kid was shot and killed and regardless of the jury's ruling, and Zimmerman will be a condemned man in the public eye for the rest of his entire life. 

     So what do I think would be just? I think it would be just for there to be public recognition, by the state and/or Zimmerman himself, that what Zimmerman did was wrong - that his racial profiling and vigilantism created a threatening situation in which violence was ultimately used. Had Zimmerman decided to go home instead of pursuing Martin, the death of a teenager might have been avoided. But I believe that visiting harm and punitive punishment against Zimmerman--via legal means or extralegal ones--won't restore anything that has been lost. Were this event to be used as a catalyst to spark an open and honest dialogue about race in America, were it to help us to reach out and try and understand one another, that would come far closer to restorative justice. 

     I can also understand the pain and outrage from a community that historically and presently faces unequal treatment under the law. We can imagine the kinds of message this verdict sends to our black communities across the United States. The exoneration of Zimmerman implies that it's okay to follow and harass black teenagers if one thinks that they might be 'up to no good'. In a lot of ways, it validates the stereotype of the African-American male criminal. It implies that blacks are inherently dangerous and not worthy of our compassion or care. And in light of the many injustices and imbalances that poor African-American communities face under the legal system every day, the ruling of this case, legally correct or not, seems to rub salt further into the wound.

     One of the most abhorrent things I found about this case was the media's portrayal and following of it. The outrage stirred up and incited by imbalanced reporting and selective editing of the 911 calls never fully dissipated, even after evidence was released that indicated that Martin attacked Zimmerman. The case was politicized, was drawn among racial lines. Hoodies and skittles became memes. During the trial, news programs treated it as though it were some sort of reality show contest. The sensational coverage utilized by the media nearly ensured that no kind of restorative resolution could come from the case.

    How many other people, regardless of race, were killed that night? How many other people faced unjust court rulings? If you care about the quality of justice done in the Martin case, I ask you to also care for the application of justice in many other unfair ways across this country. If you believe in the validity of stand your ground laws, then I ask you to believe that they apply regardless of the skin color of the assailant or the victim. If you are outraged at the injustice of the murder of a young teenager, I ask you to be outraged by violence committed by anyone in our communities, from abusive spouses to prison administrators, from gang members to overzealous police forces. 

      In the end, no matter what the court ruling, a seventeen year old kid is dead and another one of our citizens faces social death. Justice does not come from reopening and recreating the wounds and pain caused by violence. It does not come from reinforcing the segmentation of us versus them. Can we imagine that the legacy of Trayvon Martin could be something other than a national split over whether or not justice was served? Could it become something more than another youth falling victim to gun violence? Is there some way in which we could be made better from this, rather succumbing to temptations of vengeance and vigilantism that was at root of Zimmerman's own actions?

     For me, justice comes in the form of picking up the pieces of a tragedy and making them into something more whole, something more beautiful.