Don’t take this as a copout, but I’m not very concerned about the verdict. I don’t say this lightly; I have felt extra grief for the Martin and Zimmerman families this week as they have closed this insane chapter of their lives.
But what has me so intrigued and brokenhearted is what the story reveals of America’s value for people.
George Zimmerman is a human being, a man that deserves dignity and respect. Before and after what must have been the craziest night of his life, he deserves to be talked to and treated like anyone else. There is nothing about him that disqualifies him from being able to live just like anyone else.
If, at any moment, I believe George Zimmerman’s dignity is less than anyone else, I am at once doing to him what he did to Trayvon Martin. It doesn’t matter what ethnicity I come from, My Jesus tells me that all people are made in the image of his Father, and that sustained anger is tantamount to murder.
At the same time, my fear of being Black in my town has only increased. I no longer carry around the illusion that I am safe or protected. I’ve already had a carful of
White youth call me a nigger from a slow moving car this year, in Berkeley. I had a small dispute with my neighbor this weekend, and now I’m paranoid. My car got broken into (again) last night, but I’m the one making sure to smile and say hello and dress presentably as I walk through my neighborhood, at noon.
One thing, however, is sure: I refuse to demonize people and people groups in the name of justifying sustained contempt and hatred. Whether or not you think my paranoia is justified will probably depend on your embodied compassion for Black people. But even if you are completely incapable of understanding the pain and dignity-stripping existence that me and people that look like me have to endure every day, your ignorance will never justify any level of bloodthirsty anger. Ever.
Perhaps this whole issue comes down to what you believe about the “end”; that fateful day when everything will be made right, and whether or not you think that such a thing is even real. For me, I have come to know that when the rightness of God comes in full, there will be no more death or mourning, no more pain or crying. Jesus himself will do the lastdestructive thing in all the universe, when hedefeats every single power
determined to keep all creation from worshipping Him rightly, and then there will be no more need for destruction. The justice of the Kingdom of the heavens is restorative in its vision and scope. He did, after all, rise from physical death. Jesus’ eye is on a new creation, not simply a final destruction.
This probably explains what disgusts me most, that people are satisfied with punitive justice more than they are sickened by the death of a young, intelligent, Black man with a bright future. You may believe whatever you want about the verdict. But to flippantly discuss this story as though it’s okay and normal that someone violently destroyed a life and a family (and maybe his own as well) is completely inappropriate, unless you lack a moral compass. In my paradigm, death is a thing to be mourned and defeated, not something to be desired, or a way to circumvent morality but still follow the letter of the law. And yet, much of my country can’t get the taste of blood out of its mouth.
It’s easy to be ambivalent about death when it doesn’t cost you or your family its dignity.
kim:eubanks 