August 4, 2013
By Mickey Friedman
We seem to compensate for our lack of control over the large events of life with an almost pathological need to exercise the little power we do have making others miserable. Wife beaters, bullies, thugs of all colors and creeds.
Which brings me to George Zimmerman, his gun, and imaginary badge exercising power over Trayvon Martin.
Despite the obligatory “things are getting better” – heard as often as “God Bless You” after a sneeze – there is nothing new about black boys dying.
Florida’s Stand Your Ground. Justifiable Use of Force. We’re often told the Zimmerman Defense didn’t rely on Stand Your Ground, but the statute is everywhere in the consciousness of Florida. And the crux of this case involves justifiable force, the right to shoot somebody:
(1) A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:
(a) The person against whom the defensive force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against that person’s will from the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle …
(2) The presumption set forth in subsection (1) does not apply if:
(a) The person against whom the defensive force is used has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, residence …
(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
Young Trayvon, seventeen, on foot, a hundred pounds lighter than Zimmerman, black and unarmed. Flip the story. Imagine that sub-section 3 accurately describes Trayvon’s right to defend himself. That Trayvon was engaged in the lawful act of walking home, and had the right to be there. That a young black man in a hoodie “has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself …”
White people in America have feared black people ever since we brought them here in chains. But sadly, the right to self-defense is a right reserved most often for whites. Not surprisingly, it’s a lot easier to kill a black person than a white person. The Tampa Bay Times recently studied Stand Your Ground cases in Florida and found: “Defendants claiming ‘stand your ground’ are more likely to prevail if the victim is black. Seventy-three percent of those who killed a black person faced no penalty compared to 59 percent of those who killed a white.”
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense appeared in public in 1966 with guns. That the Panthers fed children was eclipsed by the fact that they were, in fact, an armed and black Neighborhood Watch Committee. They were hounded, infiltrated, and assassinated.
In the Best Small Town in America, we boast about our native son, W.E.B. DuBois. He had many a Trayvon moment. While police moved through Atlanta in 1906 confiscating arms from the black community, a mob of five thousand whites attacked African-American men, women and boys, grabbing them from trolleys, stores, and their homes, brutally beating and murdering them.
DuBois wrote: “I bought a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot. If a white mob had stepped on the campus where I lived I would without hesitation have sprayed their guts over the grass. They did not come. They went to south Atlanta where the police let them steal and kill.” He stood his ground.
DuBois knew about race: “Thus in my life the chief fact has been race … and this fact has guided, embittered, illuminated and enshrouded my life.”
DuBois knew about bigotry: “It still remains possible in the United States for a white American to be a gentleman and a scholar, a Christian and a man of integrity, and yet flatly and openly refuse to treat as a fellow human being any person who has Negro ancestry.”
Flip this story. Let’s put Zimmerman in the hoodie, walking home. Give Trayvon the truck, the gun, and the hundred pounds. The same verdict?
What if we let Trayvon stand his ground?
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The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBois, International Publishers, 1968, p.286.
DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, 1940, Du Bois Writings, The Library of America, p. 656.
DuBois, Dusk of Dawn, 1940, Du Bois Writings, The Library of America, p. 690.
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