A Few Thoughts on the Zimmerman Case

I have been thinking about what to say about the Zimmerman case.... I mean what is there to say that hasn't been eloquently stated by some writers far more gifted than I am? I was never angry.  I was sad.  But I knew what would happen.  People said I was negative, and cynical. 

I am neither: I just know how entrenched in racism our legal systems are.  There is inequity in the justice systems of the US and Canada (even though, Canadians will say that these systems a very different.) I would note that in terms of racism, they are more similar than you would think.

Of course the Zimmerman verdict went the way it did.  History has shown that the law simply doesn't value the lives of black folks.  I would add that most other races other than white folks rarely fare well in the legal system.  Think of the Scotsborough boys, Lynch laws, the death of Emmett Till, and the arrests of numerous black panthers and civil rights activists. 

But Stephanie, those examples are from so long ago, surely it has changed for the better now? 

I don't want to think of legal racial equity as on a spectrum anymore.  If I continue to think of it that way, I'll get complacent-- I need to think in terms of right and wrong; working and broken.   Our legal institutions are broken in terms of race and equity.  When it comes right down to it, white folks and folks of other races are not equal in the eyes of the law. So instead of a spectrum of less or more racist, I choose to state that the system is still racist. Stated simply, it will be racist until it is not.  "Almost not racist" has made us lazy.

But even if folks still want to use the shifting spectrum of racism, who says its even that much better? Even with the light skin privilege I carry, I have still felt the sting of the unjust, unequal legal system.

For example:  One night I was standing with my husband (then boyfriend) at a bus stop. Two police officers stopped their car to "talk" to me. My husband thought nothing of it, why would he? He has had a great relationship with police officers. But I knew better, I told my partner that they were coming to bug me.  Of course, my boyfriend didn't believe me. But they did get out, and they did ask me what I was doing, where I was going, if I had ID, what I was carrying in my backpack, why I was out so late, where did I live... All of which I complied with, and answered with a lot of "yessirs," and "no sirs."  My companion asked the officers why they were so interested in me (something I would have never asked myself.) Their answer was because I fit the description of a "drug dealer and prostitute" that was seen in the area.   I knew who they were looking for, we had gone to school together.  I looked nothing like her.  She was tall and thin. The one thing we did have in common was our race.

When I told friends this story, they had many excuses- the cops were doing their job, they were being through, how could I be sure that it was about my race, and my favourite-- I should be happy they were doing their job so well! But that wasn't the last time that happened. I was suspected of a crime I didn't and couldn't have committed.  I've been followed and harassed by cops.  And every time, some of my white friends would tell me I was over reacting.   I couldn't possibly know that my race had anything to do with it.

But I do know that my race has everything to do with my interactions with the police.  Each time I had a problem, there had been reported and documented cases of my local police using racial profiling.  This is what Zimmerman did;  he profiled racially and reacted.  Why would the legal system convict a man for using one of their own practices?   

For North American society, racist inequality is ingrained in all of our institutions.  Law, (as evidenced most recently by the Trayvon Martin case;) education (we need a Black History month to help people remember to add us into the story;) media (that Cheerios commercial debacle, Paula Deen, there's a lot.)  Its everywhere.  Every institution tells me that my life is not worth the same as a white person's life.  And unfortunately, black folks have learned to live with that.  I've learned to live with that.

But I shouldn't live with that.  But the fight for racial equality seems insurmountable when I am constantly being told that its not that bad.  Trayvon Martin is dead.  It is that bad.