CSotD: The law of “them” and “us”
Skip to comments
The river of Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman cartoons should begin flooding in any time now, but my expectations are very low and I'm not going to wait to tackle the topic.
Besides, I like Daryl Cagle's take: It's not only simple and clean, but doesn't over-reach. Nice piece of wordplay, too.
I doubt anyone's going to top it by much. Judging from Facebook commentary and a few other things, there is going to be a lot of blah-de-blah-blah about this, but, folks, it's not that complex unless you want it to be.
First of all, there's no logical connection to OJ. OJ broke the law and got off through a combination of expert counsel (he still had money then), a jury that fought hard not to convict him and a prosecution that assumed the verdict was in the bag.
George Zimmerman did not break the law, and that's the problem.
It's not about the jury. It's not about the prosecutors. It's not about the defense.
It's about the law, it's about the state that passed the law, it's about the people who wanted the law.
And it's deeper than this one law.
Start with why we have laws: We have laws in order to avoid escalating vendettas. Or, at least, we used to.
The doctrine of "an eye for an eye" is not a demand for revenge. It's a requirement for proportion.
It's ironic that the same people who want permission to shoot kids in hoodies also whine incessantly about "victimology," because one of the ways in which they have corrupted the law is with "victim statements" at sentencing, and a general undermining of proportionality in favor of revenge.
It is not justice if there is one punishment for killing a person with no friends and a harsher punishment for killing someone from an articulate, attractive family. But the conservative cult of victimhood and their demand for "victim statements" sets up just such a system.
It is an overall attitude in which "we" seek protection against "them," and in which "we" are the Good Guys and "they" are the scary Bad Guys.
Wisdom has also always recognized that self-defense is a positive defense to an accusation of murder, but that it can also be an unjustified excuse.
Consequently, in civilized societies, the doctrine has demanded proportionality: You could obviously shoot and kill a man pointing a gun at you, you couldn't shoot an unarmed man and the court would weigh the evidence if you shot and killed a man with a knife, but would likely rule in your favor.
It also generally demanded that you be actually defending yourself. If you looked out your window and saw someone in your driveway stealing your car stereo, you couldn't shoot him.
Under "Stand Your Ground," however, you can, as long as you step out the door and yell at him first, and then decide you're scared of him. Or at least make some noise so he looks up at you in the window and scares you.
When the justification for killing someone becomes "I was scared," the law becomes subjective and hierarchal and unjust.
And suddenly the people who campaign so hard against "values education" and insist that the 10 Commandments are not the 10 Suggestions, go all touchy-feely when it comes down to defining what, and who, they're scared of.
Which is why George Zimmerman was permitted to stalk, confront and then kill someone he felt didn't belong in his neighborhood, and Charles Pierce lays out the impact of the jury's ruling rather well.
As does Keith Knight.
Is it "racist"? Well, only to the extent that race enters into what we think of each other, and who gets to decide right and wrong.
I was in the midst of a police riot at an anti-war rally in Chicago a few weeks before the famous one at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, and one of my two most compelling memories is the sincere, helpless dismay of the honest cops, begging us to stay back and out of it while their brothers-in-blue beat the crap out of those who ventured over to the Civic Center Plaza.
The other is, when it was over and we were walking away, the carloads of young black men who drove by, pumping fists out the window and shouting "Now you know! Now you know!"
Now we knew.
And I had other times, in Chicago and elsewhere, when rogue cops and assorted rednecks would hassle me because of my long hair. Sometimes it was just an annoyance, a couple of times it got kind of scary.
But as soon as I got out of school, got married and cut my hair, it all stopped.
Now, it could well be that, if some white juggalo in low-riding, chain-draped pants had been slouching his way through that neighborhood, George Zimmerman would have decided he didn't belong there, either.
And I'm guessing that those six nice ladies on the jury would be scared of juggalos, too, and would decide it was okay to shoot one.
But if Trayvon had been coming home from a job at Best Buy, so that he was dressed in khakis and a blue polo shirt, would Zimmerman have decided he was a punk and an asshole? We don't know.
The bottom line, however, is that I could cut my hair and become one of "us," but you can't decide not to be black anymore, and every young black man in America learns that he is one of "them," for as long as he is black.
(Want me to stop using this Watch Your Head strip so often? Make it stop happening so often.)
As for all the crap about what Trayvon Martin should have done, the Supreme Court's overturning of the Voter Rights Act is based on the idea that we no longer live in a world where, when a white man and a black man meet on the sidewalk, the black man is expected to step aside and walk in the gutter.
Yeah, those days sure are over, all except for the part where the black man is expected to step aside and walk in the gutter.
Darrin Bell did a masterful arc on the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, from which this comes, and the question is fair: Why wasn't Trayvon allowed to stand his ground?
At seventeen, I might well have confronted some guy stalking me in the dark. In fact, I'm pretty sure I would have, because there were times when that was how I responded in similar situations. I'm not sure I wouldn't do it today.
But it's not about the jury, it's not about the defense, it's not about the prosecution. Don't get mad at them.
It's about the law, a law so touchy-feely and ridiculously subjective that a woman who fires a warning shot at a man who has beaten her in the past and has just announced his intention of doing it again gets 20 years in jail, while a guy who shoots his wife's lover in the back and another guy who stalks and shoots an unarmed kid both walk free.
Bury the rag deep in your face.
But before you do that, go here.
Yes, I know Zimmerman didn't get off because of being rich.
But that's not the justice we were seeking.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
Comments 8
Comments are closed.