Black to the Future

So let’s try a little role-playing game. You are the [father/mother/parents] of an African-American teenager living in a state with a stand-your-ground law, perhaps exacerbated by a right to carry a concealed weapon. Make that a son, one who isn’t a gangbanger, is doing well in school but dresses to fit in with his peers. You’ve just watched how such laws are applied in an actual case, where an armed man with his own biases and suspicions, literally stalked a black teenager, armed with little more than some candy and a desire to get back to his father’s fiancée’s house. Bang, a child is dead. Apparently, that stalking didn’t matter, because the jury only focused on the moment of confrontation between stalker and victim, and in the absence of any real third party witnesses or evidence to the contrary, and they felt forced to acquit the stalker under this new notion of “stand-your-ground” self-defense.

So now you are trying to tell your son how to live, react to confrontation, deal with the police and carry himself when he is out in the world, particularly when he is out in the non-African American world. You’ve studied this case. You’ve looked at the law, and your son is precious. What do you say to him? Don’t wear hoodies, ever? Don’t wear oversized sweats or tee shirts with hip-hop allusions or other “cool slogans”? Don’t go into a white or Hispanic neighborhood, ever? Even if you are visiting a friend or a relative? Wear a suit and tie everywhere? Run every time you see a white or Hispanic person looking at you?

Here are some examples of what black parents are actually telling their kids. “Lesley Grice, 35, who was visiting a friend [in University City, Missouri, a state that has both stand-your-ground and concealed weapons laws] but lives in Kirkwood, a St. Louis suburb that has a history of rocky race relations, said she had asked her 18-year-old son to stop wearing hoodies, a request that did not go over so well. ‘He’s like, ‘That’s what I like to wear,’ ’ she said.

“Ms. Grice, a housekeeper, said she had also told her son that when he was talking to adults, to keep his hands in place so it was clear that he was not reaching for anything.

“Christian Hayes, 24, said he did not know what he would tell his 7-month-old twin sons about the Martin case when they were older. For now, he described a sense of being trapped in his own neighborhood. If someone were following him, he said, ‘I’m not going to run; I’m going to ask him what he’s following me for.’ But, he added, ‘It just makes me feel like you can’t do nothing or go nowhere.’” New York Times, July 17^th.

So let’s look at another instance, back in Florida, where an African American woman, Marissa Jackson, faced a husband with a history of abuse. She even had a protective order against him. Believing that the stand-your-ground law insulated her from prosecution and fearing grave bodily harm yet not wanting to kill or hurt anyone, as her husband approached her menacingly, she reached into the glove compartment in her car, pulled out her gun and fired two warning shots inside her own castle… er home. It worked, and the potential abuser left.

Because a gun was involved and because the prosecutor elected to charge her with attempted and aggravated assault, Marissa was offered a plea-bargain that included a three year prison sentence. As the mother of twins who needed her care and believing that she acted in self-defense, Marissa elected to go to trial. “A jury found her guilty as charged: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Because she fired a gun while committing a felony, Florida's mandatory-minimum gun law dictated the 20-year sentence.” Huffington Post, May 19^th.

Under Florida law, the judge had no choice because of the nature of the conviction. It seems that she would have been better off killing her husband, eliminating the only witness against her, invoking the stand-your-ground law (or better yet, the castle doctrine of protecting yourself in your own home) and mimicking Mr. George Zimmerman by not even taking the stand. Here, a life was spared, a potential abuser with a protective order against him thwarted, and no one was hurt. A storm of protest has surfaced here as well, but then, Marissa is black, and George Zimmerman isn’t. If anyone thinks that race wasn’t a part of these decisions, they must be living in an exceptionally isolated if not delusional environment.

Where minorities do in fact face unequal justice under state law, the federal government would seem to be mandated to step in and remedy the situation. Whether it was reversing the “separate but equal” educational world of Brown vs. Board of Education or implementing the 24^th Amendment’s ban on poll taxes under Harper vs. Virginia Board of Elections (both seminal Supreme court cases), where state laws effectively resulted in severe restrictions in minority right or lives, that’s precisely what the federal government is supposed to do.

In George Zimmerman’s case, the jury was limited to the moment of the confrontation between Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin. They made the best decision they could in the absence of hard contrary evidence in a world where the standard of conviction is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But they weren’t addressing whether Zimmerman’s reason for stalking Martin was possibly a hate crime, racially motivated, the kind of “crime” that our civil rights statutes are aimed at preventing. Even assuming that the stand-your-ground laws are constitutional, can such self-defense statutes be used by people with hate in their hearts and racism on their minds, assuming that these facts are present?

If you look at the Zimmerman-Martin events, there are two rather distinct questions that need to be addressed: Was this a hate crime? Did the stand-your-ground law provide a defense to the state charge of murder or manslaughter? The jury only looked at the latter, which apparently they were forced to do under Florida law. The hate crime issue remains unexplored and unanswered.

For all those marching in protest around the nation, for all those African American (and why not white?!) parents having those difficult conversations with their kids (and themselves), it would seem necessary for the federal government to make a clear statement that stand-your-ground is not a defense to racially or hate-crime motivated killings, regardless of how a state law may decide a case without looking at these factors.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if we indeed are the land of the free and the home of the brave, let’s act like it!