Heads I Win, Tails You Lose or Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game

I strongly believe that race pervades many aspects of how our society and laws are constructed. I believe that the law and our society favor people with fair skin (White/Caucasian/European). I believe that killing is wrong. I also believe that George Zimmerman broke no laws, and legally deserves to be a free man. In the last few moments before Zimmerman pulled the trigger that discharged a bullet that ended an unarmed 17 year-old's life, based on what I have read and seen, I think he legitimately felt that it was a question of his life or Trayvon's. Zimmerman's injuries support this view. I feel profound sadness and anger for Trayvon Martin's family, for black people, and for those who have a similar moral belief system as my own that renounces physical violence or discrimination based on physical characteristics, gender, sex, or sexuality. But the law worked as it was intended, and the legal system, specifically the jury in the case against Zimmerman, made the right decision based on the evidence and the law. They did so even with a judge who was trying to tip the balance against Zimmerman. Ta-nehesi Coates of the Atlantic provides a cold and critical look that articulates the legal fairness of the trial here:

"It is painful to say this: Trayvon Martin is not a miscarriage of American justice, but American justice itself. This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn't come back from twenty-four down."

An editorial in the Chicago Tribune, makes a similar case for the legal correctness of the jury's decision, although in a less pointed way. I think it is important for those who are demonstrating to be clear about what they are reacting to. A case about an individual going free and another one laying dead is not really what this should be about at all. This certainly was not the first such instance, nor will it be the last. The problem is that of an entire society actively and tacitly agreeing that one entire group of people is less human than another. How we can fix that, I am not quite sure, but marches and protests will be fleeting and will soon be forgotten.