By Julian Abagond What did race have to do with the George Zimmerman case in America?George Zimmerman, a half-white, half-Latino man who gets a bloody nose and a few scratches on his head, shoots dead Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, 17-year-old black boy, calls it self-defence and is found “not guilty” of both murder and manslaughter by a nearly all-white court. How could that possibly be racist? I mean, it is not like Zimmerman used the N-word. It was a fair trial! Besides, the president is black! Here are some ways: Black life was assumed not to matter much. In effect, a bloody nose and a few scratches on the head of a man who is half-white mattered more than the life of a 17-year-old black boy. It was not just Zimmerman who thought that, so did the police, who did not think the killing was a big deal. So did the prosecution, who pretty much just went through the motions – they did not even properly prepare their witnesses. The Black Brute stereotype – the idea that black men rape and kill for no reason, that they have “violent tendencies”, “criminal propensities”, as if huge numbers of them are savage psychopaths or [...]
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