by Patrick H. Moore
Now that the jury has made its decision in the George Zimmerman second-degree-murder trial, and while we wait to see what repercussions result from the decision (riots? protests? arrests? more violence?), I have been thinking about the larger ramifications of this compelling — albeit incredibly frustrating — case. What do the incendiary social implications surrounding this case say about us as a society? What does it bode for the future, notwithstanding the fact that George Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges?
In mulling this question over, I was struck by an insightful meditation posted by Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker entitled “What the Zimmerman Trial Was About.”
In the post, Jelani Cobb writes:
Before the trial began, Judge Deborah Nelson forbid use of the term “racial profiling” in the courtroom. At first, it seemed that the order would insure that throughout the trial race would be addressed the same way it was outside her courtroom—that is, by talking around it. Instead, it meant that by the closing arguments it was easier to recognize that race is just part of the problem. The logic of profiling itself is on trial.
This is spot on. Cobb is absolutely right. “Profiling” as an over-arching concept now stands at the very heart of our public discourse and is intrinsic to our public policy with respect to the way entire segments of are population are perceived and, most importantly, ARE TREATED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT.
Cobb writes:
By degrees, we’ve accepted profiling as a central aspect of American life. Last month, I listened to Heather MacDonald, of the Manhattan Institute, argue that, though the N.Y.P.D.’s stop-and-frisk policy may be inconvenient for the many law-abiding black and Latino men it targets, it is ultimately necessary to make business owners feel safe. Surveillance has become a fact of life for unknown numbers of Muslims in this country. Our recent debates about the N.S.A. and the hazily expanding parameters of its surveillance programs center around this same question of profiling. If the majority of the public supports electronic eavesdropping, it’s because of the assumption that profiling will exclude them from suspicion. For anyone who’s known what it means to “fit the description,” the calculation is not nearly so simple.
Heather MacDonald’s statement rubs me the wrong way: “It is ultimately necessary to make business owners feel safe.” Why should business owners feel “safer” than the many law-abiding black and Latino men who are targeted by NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy. Why should the need for business owners to feel “safe” trump the basic civil rights of large segments of our population? Why should we, no matter what ethnic, racial or religious group we belong to, be willing to sacrifice the civil rights of any “other” group as long as our particular group is not being “profiled” or “surveilled?”
The notion that the “other group” is somehow “bad” while “we,” whoever we are, are “good” lies at the heart of this problem. The reality, of course, is that every diverse group includes some undeniably bad members. However, I would suggest that most members of most groups do not fall at either end of the spectrum but, rather, that we humans typically consist of a peculiar mix of qualities, some of which could be termed, for lack of better descriptive terms, “good”, some “bad”, but that most of our distinctively “human” qualities probably do not lend themselves to such glib definitions .
In the article, Jelani Cobb closes with the following highly suggestive statement:
Throughout the sixteen-month-long saga that has led to a jury in Sanford, Florida deliberating the fate of George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, repeatedly said that this case was not about race. That’s partly true. But it’s also true that we live in an era where we understand security as the yield of broadening suspicions, and that at our safest almost all of us are Trayvon Martin to someone else.
“Almost all of us are Trayvon Martin to someone else.” To live in a world that is this polarized is cause for grave concern. Yet, it is the issue that confronts us every day of our lives.
Now that the jurors have decided George Zimmerman’s fate, we wait to see whether the black-white polarization that is “a clear and present danger” in Seminole County, Florida, and other parts of the country as well, will deteriorate into utter chaos — with all the violence and destruction that such a breakdown could bring.
When humanity is subsumed by the underlying “beast”, it is never a good thing. And right at this moment, at least in Seminole County, the “beast” is wide awake and dangerous.