“The Wrong Race, Committed No Crime”
By: MariLu Ravel and Lizbeth Gonzalez
Throughout her visual album Lemonade, Beyoncé incorporates several references to the racial issues regarding police violence as well as highlighting the disparity in the socioeconomic statuses between black people and white people. One key moment in the video is when the mothers of three young black men, who were killed while unarmed, are shown on the screen holding photos of their deceased children. While I was going through the book The Fire This Time, I was re-reading some parts in the book to get an understanding of the book again. I went back to reading “White Rage,” and in that section of the book, writer Carol Anderson talks about Micheal Brown who was killed by a white man. Another court case that is mentioned in the essay “White Rage” is the trial of George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin, and many also believe the cover of Claudia Rankine’s book Citizen to be a direct reference to Martin’s murder. I had heard about these stories shortly after the incidents actually happened. They were all over the news, but I didn’t pay much attention because I was still too young to process what exactly was happening. After seeing those stories referenced in “White Rage,” I realized how little I truly know about them and decided to look more into the Trayvon Martin and Micheal Brown cases. Upon re-evaluating these trials, I discovered the root of these events and I better understand the racial and ethical complexities of these trials.
On February 26, 2012, George Zimmerman shot and killed a 17-year-old boy on the side of the street in his suburban neighborhood Twin Lakes, a townhouse community located in Sanford, Florida. During the time since such a tragedy occurred, Zimmerman was acquitted of murder charges under the protection of the stand-your-ground law, which legalizes the use of deadly force as self-defense against deadly force and great bodily harm, and the trial of young Trayvon Martin’s murder has become a point of controversy and heated debate. More than ever before, the public began to question the judicial system and how the man that killed a young teenager, who was simply walking home after a trip to the 7-Eleven, managed to walk away from court without a single charge against him. The reason that many speculate to be the key factor in the acquittal of Zimmerman: Trayvon Martin was black.
Trayvon Martin
On the evening of February 26, 2012, Trayvon Martin was walking home and talking on the phone when Zimmerman began to follow him. According to witness accounts, Martin expressed confusion and irritation at being pursued by “a creepy-ass cracka” and eventually decided to confront the man who was stalking him through the neighborhood.
Zimmerman had been closely following a hooded young man, who he would later learn was Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old, newly-affiliated resident of Twin Lakes community, for purposes of acting as the neighborhood watch or hero of sorts. As delinquent crime had been on the rise in the neighborhood at the time, Zimmerman had believed that, through his pursuit of the boy along the streets of Twin Lakes, he would be preventing another burglary by yet another young hoodlum. However, upon reaching the hooded boy, a scuffle broke out between the two, subsequent events leading to the death of Martin at the hands of his pursuer.
George Zimmerman
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize the potential racial implications of Zimmerman’s description of 17-year-old Martin as “a real suspicious guy” in his statement to the police. Zimmerman’s defense case heavily relied on the notion that Martin had physically attacked Zimmerman, harming him enough that Zimmerman would logically fear for his life, and although the eye witness accounts and evidence disclosed in court supported Zimmerman’s claim that Martin had in fact engaged him in a physical altercation, the likelihood of Martin’s notably smaller frame being able to attack Zimmerman to the point of being considered “deadly force” is minimal. Moreover, and possibly the most tragic aspect of the entire event, if Zimmerman had simply stayed in his car and waited for a police officer to arrive like he was told by the dispatcher, rather than deciding to disregard the instruction and follow the boy through the streets on foot, Trayvon Martin may still be alive, thereby eliminating the court case that set a precedent for the acceptance of the influence of internalized bias in judicial proceedings today.
Micheal Brown was an 18 year old high school graduate. He would make music and would go by the name “Big Mike” in St.Louis County, Missouri. The shooting happened August 9, 2014 in the morning. He was with a friend when they were confronted by a Ferguson cop. Someone reported that there was a theft that happened at a convenience store. After Micheal and his friend Dorian attempted to run away from the situation. The officer took his gun out and shot Micheal six times, which led to him dying within 90 seconds after the cop shot at him. Micheal was unarmed when this happened, said his friend Dorian. In total the officer fired twelve bullets. Dorian also said that the officer grabbed Micheal by the neck through the car window. Other witnesses that were there said that Micheal had his hands in the air. Which is a universal sign of surrender. In the article that I read it said that Micheals body was left in the middle of the street until the morgue came to take it at 4 p.m.. One thing I do remember is the protest that I would see on the news when this all happened. Stores getting broken into, fires, it was chaos. And I don’t blame them. It was a horrible and sad thing that happened once again to an innocent black young man.
So I also looked into the whole case of Micheal Brown. Officer Darren Wilson, who was the officer that shot Micheal Brown did not get any charges at all. This also led into another protest throughout the country and in Ferguson. One of the things that really upset me was the fact that the attorney questioned if this whole thing was considered “murder or manslughter under Missouri law”. Once that was said the judge also said “After an independent and in-depth review of the evidence, we cannot prove that he did ‘’, said Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell.
I am not sure how to feel about this case. It rubs me the wrong way just knowing that the officer didn’t even get one charge after wrongly shooting Micheal Brown. Another quote that I pulled from the CNN article that was said by the attorney was “I also want to be clear that our investigation does not exonerate Darren Wilson,” Bell said, pointing out the difference between proving a case during trial and “clearing him of any and all wrongdoing.” I think it’s a bit wild how Bell says that the officer was still wrong for what he did, but they are not going to give him any charges but he is still wrong. It’s like she is trying to be the person that isn’t picking sides but it seems as if she is. You do as you wish with this information.
Trayvon Martin’s death and the judicial trial that followed set a precedent for the use, and abuse, of the stand-your-ground law with particular success against black victims. The lack of legal justice against Michael Brown’s murderer demonstrates the acceptance of this precedent. As Isabel Wilkerson notes in “Where Do We Go From Here,” these trials illustrate the “feedback loop” of racial injustice that has stemmed from the internalization of bias throughout American society over generations. The issue with subconscious bias is that there is too often little to no concrete evidence to prove that it has played a role in the injustice of judicial trials, though too often… it does.
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Websites used-
The George Zimmerman Trial: An Account
https://famous-trials.com/zimmerman1/2319-home
Missouri police officer who killed Michael Brown faces no …
https://www.cnn.com › 2020/07/30 › ferguson-missouri-…
The Michael Brown killing: What you need to know — Atlanta …
