Tag Archives: justice

Zimmerman Not Guilty of Murder of Trayvon Martin? Take Off The Hoods,Americans! By Louise Annarino,July 15

Used to be the Ku Klux Klan, men…even women… of every education level and background including law enforcement, donned white robes and hoods to protect their identity and hide their shame. Their stated purpose was to meet out justice to African-Americans who had crossed over a boundary; and,in some way failed to acknowledge the superiority and power of the white community.  Perhaps, a 14 year old African-American boy smiled at a white married woman as he entered her small grocery http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/ . Perhaps a 37 year old African-American father of three children spent his days registering voters and seeking the end of Jim Crow laws as a  N.A.A.C.P field organizer http://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-should-know-about-medgar-evers.

The murders of Emmet Till and Medgar Evers are well known, but every African-American, boys and men in particular, endure retaliatory acts based on racial bias and racial animus every day. They are familiar with expressions of bigotry and punishment justified by white fear. The white robes are gone now,replaced by an unreasonable white fear instututionalized in the law, and unquestioned by the white media.

Attorneys on each side of the George Zimmerman murder trial scrupulously avoided the racial motivation for the murder. The judge ordered the phrase “racial profiling” not be used. White “legal experts” on every channel affirmed this approach, as that required by a unbiased court. They are all wrong. The only way the court could have been free of bias would have been to acknowledge the racial bias underlying the case.  Lady Justice is blindfolded but she is not stupid. She must not pretend race is not a motivation to kill. Our history clearly tells us otherwise. She need not play the fool; unless, she fears her power and authority can be used to empower scary African-American boys and men.

I expected the defense team to provide a strong defense woven into a story of why it was reasonable for a fully-grown man,trained in martial arts and armed with a gun, to fear a 17 year old African-American boy on his way home from a “munchies-run”. I expected the defense team to discount the boy’s right to defend himself from the attack his cultural history and his phone friend warned him to expect from his silent stalker. And,I expected the defense team to turn Trayvon’s self-defense into the justification of Zimmerman’s fear.

I naively did not expect the prosecution team to ignore racial bias.  Special Prosecutor Angela Corey stated “This case has never been about race or the right to bear arms. We believe this case all along was about boundaries, and George Zimmerman exceeded those boundaries.”  http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0714/Zimmerman-not-guilty-Victory-for-new-kind-of-civil-rights-era The prosecution was eager to talk about boundaries,a euphemism for racial animus. But of course, we refuse to admit the existence of racial bigotry. We refuse even when we are charged to seek justice for the murder of an African-American teenager who did NOTHING wrong;certainly,nothing to explain the irrational or unreasonable fear proclaimed by Zimmerman’s attorneys. The prosecution failed to admit race drove motivation until the last minutes of the trial. It allowed the defense to hide race under the hood,as many of us do when we face racial animus. What we fear is not African-Americans.What we fear is our own racism.

Now, the “legal experts” are proclaiming it is impossible to prove racial animus led to Trayvon’s death. The only reason they make this claim is beacuse they cannot comprehend, or refuse to acknowledge, the continuing and historical irrationality of white fear. No one who is willing to admit this “fear turned to hate” is hogwash believes the DOJ cannot find such a connection. On THE VIEW today,the “legal expert” Dan Abrams responded to factually-based questions and comments by Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd by dismissing their comments as “emotional’. While they clearly felt emotional, their comments were no less rational this his own. In fact, they were more so http://abc.go.com/shows/the-view/blogs/hot-topics/george-zimmerman-verdict.

The lack of racial intelligence among our legal experts, prosecutors,defense attorneys,judges, media pundits and manyof us white Americans is institutionalized. This must change. twe must do all we can to raise our racial I.Q. We no longer wear physical hoods over our heads to hide our identity and our shame. We wear figurative hoods of ignorance over our heads to pretend we have no reason to feel shame. Take off the hoods,America! We cannot change what we refuse to face…our selves.