By Charles M. Blow, NEW YORK TIMES, April 7, 2012 -- The case of Trayvon Martin is producing another O.J. Simpson moment for America.
At least that’s the view of the people at Gallup who released a poll on Thursday detailing divergent racial views of the Martin case.
The USA Today/Gallup poll found that most blacks believe that George Zimmerman, the Hispanic man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black teenager, in what he claims was an act of self-defense, is definitely guilty of a crime. It also found that nearly three-fourths of blacks believe that racial bias was a major factor in the shooting, and the events that led up to it, and that Zimmerman would have been arrested if he had shot a white person.
(Zimmerman was taken into police custody after the shooting but was released and hasn’t been charged.)
On all these measures, nonblacks were more reticent. Only 11 percent believed that Zimmerman was definitely guilty, while most said that the case was unclear or they had no opinion. Only about a third believed that racial bias was a factor or that Zimmerman would have been arrested if the person he shot was white.
Gallup draws a direct parallel between this racial divide and the one following the Simpson trial: “U.S. public opinion about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida reflects the same type of racial divide found in 1995 surveys asking about the murder trial of O.J. Simpson in Los Angeles. In one Gallup poll conducted Oct. 5-7, 1995, for example, 78 percent of blacks said the jury that found Simpson not guilty of murder made the right decision, while only 42 percent of whites agreed.”
The comparison is a bit loaded because the cases are miles apart in the details and circumstances. Simpson was accused of being a killer, whereas Martin was the one killed.
But there is an important, if strained, commonality between them: the issue of equal treatment by the justice system.
As a black man who thought O.J. Simpson was as guilty as the day is long, I found black people’s consistent and overwhelming belief in his innocence a low point. I eventually chalked it up to a perverse pursuit of equal justice by a people who saw the system as unfairly stacked against them. If the system was broken was it unbiased in its brokenness? Was part of equal justice equal injustice?
You can argue that intellectually, but the argument is morally bankrupt. There is no right in aligning yourself with wrong.
The Martin case, on the other hand, holds the potential to be a high point. There is nobility in the advocacy for truth and justice for a dead child who would still be alive if Zimmerman had not pursued him. While opinions shouldn’t get ahead of the facts — and we must all remember that what is right and what is legal don’t always dovetail — public pressure for a thorough investigation and fair dealings in this case needn’t and mustn’t be defined as a black issue. It’s a universally human issue.
Furthermore, Trayvon’s death and the public outcry about the case has shined a harsh light on the plight of young black men in America and the shadow of suspicion that hangs over them. It has also renewed the debate about racial-profiling — which is completely incongruous to any basic concept of fairness. Guilt isn’t genetic. Color and culture don’t dictate criminality. Innocence must be the default assumption. No one should be punished for another’s sins.
And, as the investigation progresses, it may well open the conversation even wider to consider unequal treatment of boys and men — by all authority figures in this country — and the heavy toll that that takes.
That unequal treatment starts early. A report last month in The New York Times found that “black students, especially boys, face much harsher discipline in public schools than other students, according to new data from the Department of Education.” And, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch, students of color are disproportionately subjected to corporal punishments like paddling.
Those inequities persist into adulthood and manifest in things like disproportionate rates of stop-and-frisks for blacks and Hispanics in places such as New York City and in harsher sentences for comparable crimes for blacks and Hispanics.
This lifetime of harsher treatment seems to stand in stark contrast to the authorities’ treatment of Zimmerman. This perception of unequal treatment eats away at the psyche of these men and boys of color and erodes their faith in a just and honest society. That is its own tragedy.
That makes this case simultaneously simple and complex. In the decision not to charge Zimmerman, was the boy with the candy accorded the same presumption of innocence as the man with the gun?
This isn’t 1995. This is the good fight. This is about restoration of faith. Until there is a trial for George Zimmerman, the whole justice system is on trial.
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Saturday, April 7th 2012 at 11:06PM
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