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Black writer warns of probable aftermath if Zimmerman acquitted
April 21, 2012
Keith Wimer
Wilmington Religion & Politics Examiner
Statistics show a deep divide in opinions along racial lines regarding the killing of a black Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman, who is of mixed ethnicity, white and Hispanic.
Zimmerman has claimed self-defense, invoking the Sunshine State’s “Stand Your Ground” law which has also come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the incident.
Reuters news service reported last week, 91% of blacks believe Martin was unjustly killed, while only 35% of whites concurred. Hispanics were in between at 59% according to polling numbers Reuters gathered by querying nearly 2,000 Americans.
The disparity of views over Martin’s death is even less ambiguous than another racially charged case, the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
In the aftermath of Simpson’s astonishing acquittal, despite the mountain of damning evidence implicating the former professional football star of killing his ex-wife and her friend, Gallup Polls showed that 78% of blacks believed the verdict was correct, while less than half, 47%, of whites believe the jury got it right.
Whether or not the Reuters survey is completely accurate, it suggests that the rift between races in the U.S. is widening, not closing.
The peril in even examining this subject is that one is likely to be perceived as a racist whenever one makes particular observations based on past history. So be it.
For instance, when O.J. Simpson was acquitted vast numbers of blacks rejoiced, while the majority of whites bemoaned the jury for its asininity. And... that was just about it.
Significantly nonexistent afterwards was rioting, looting and burning of businesses, or attacks on hapless victims. After all, a black man had received justice, so-called.
Not so when the jury in the trial of police officers involved in the beating of defiant motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles failed to elicit the verdicts minorities were clamoring for.
In the days following that trial, blacks and Hispanics took to the streets of the L.A. basin killing, burning, rampaging, and robbing, feeling “they” had been denied justice.
Mansfield Frazier, an excellent black writer, a man who “watched the King riots unfold from a Los Angeles motel window,” warns that an acquittal in the Zimmerman trial could put America in “danger of facing Rodney King, Part II.”
It is however, as though Frazier’s referenced column is part cautionary and part threat. In it he concludes that Zimmerman, for the good of the country should quietly accept “a plea deal that has him back on the street within this decade.”
Otherwise, Frazier concludes, “a not-guilty verdict in this case could very easily turn the racial cold war into a very hot one.”
Demonstrating his own undeniable prejudice, Frazier also refers to Zimmerman’s father as “a knee-jerk far-right ideologue” for stating in a CBS interview that he, “…never foresaw so much hate coming from the president, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP.”
If the facts of the case ultimately establish that Zimmerman is not guilty as charged, what of it? Should he be expected to subject himself to a hellish prison existence to placate the irate masses of blacks in their bloodlust for “justice”?
Exactly what kind of justice is that anyway?
Perhaps the self-appointed neighborhood watch commander was destined to become a martyr regardless of the truth, when he killed – justified or not – the youth.
It appears that the nature of his martyrdom has yet to be determined.
It’s tragic that the land of “liberty and justice for all,” has become something so vastly distorted and darker these days.
http://www.examiner.com/article/black-writer-warns-of-probable-aftermath-if-zimmerman-acquitted
