By Aura Bogado
July 14, 2013
"Information Clearing House - "The Nation" -- A jury has found George
Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in connection to death of 17-year-old
Trayvon Martin. But while the verdict came as a surprise to some people, it
makes perfect sense to others. This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of
the way white supremacy operates in America.
Throughout the
trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman jury” in that Seminole
County courtroom, adding that most of them were mothers. That is true—but so is
that five of the six jurors were white, and that is profoundly significant for
cases like this one. We also know that the lone juror of color was seen
apparently wiping a tear during the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But that
tear didn’t ultimately convince her or the white people on that jury that
Zimmerman was guilty of anything. Not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and
killing a black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”
In the last few
days, Latinos in particular have spoken up again about Zimmerman’s race, and
the “white Hispanic” label in particular, largely responding to
social media users and mass media pundits who employed the term. Watching
Zimmerman in the defense seat, his sister in the courtroom, and his mother on
the stand, one can’t deny the skin color that informs their experience. They
are not white. Yet Zimmerman’s apparent ideology—one that is suspicious of
black men in his neighborhood, the “assholes who always get away—” is one that
adheres to white supremacy. It was replicated in the courtroom by his defense,
whose team tore away at Rachel Jeantel, questioning the young woman as if she
was taking a Jim Crow–era literacy test. A defense that, during closing, cited
slave-owning rapist Thomas Jefferson, played an animation for the jury based on erroneous
assumptions, made racially coded accusations about Trayvon Martin emerging “out
of the darkness,” and had the audacity to compare the case of the killing of an
unarmed black teenager to siblings arguing over which one stole a cookie.
When Zimmerman
was acquitted today, it wasn’t because he’s a so-called white Hispanic. He’s
not. It’s because he abides by the logic of white supremacy, and was supported
by a defense team—and a swath of society—that supports the lingering idea that
some black men must occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep
society-at-large safe.
Media on the
left, right and center have been fanning
the flames of fear-mongering, speculating that people—and black people
especially—will take to the streets. That fear-mongering represents a deep
white anxiety about black bodies on the streets, and echoes Zimmerman’s fears:
that black bodies on the street pose a public threat. But the real violence in
those speculations, regardless of whether they prove to be true, is that it
silences black anxiety. The anxiety that black men feel every time they walk
outside the door—and the anxiety their loved ones feel for them as well. That
white anxiety serves to conceal the real public threat: that a black man is killed every twenty-eight hours by a cop or vigilante.
People will
take to the streets, and with good reason. They’ll be there because they know
that, yes, some people do always get away—and it tends to be those strapped
with guns and the logic of white supremacy at their side.
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