Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the Story That Defines a People
Truth is really secondary to the whole debate. What the debaters are speaking about never really touches upon cardinal issues of American jurisprudence, such as a speedy trial by jury of one’s own peers, the principle of being innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and the like. These ideas are important, but the national debate is dealing with something else. I seriously doubt the issues being discussed in the public square were on the minds of Zimmerman and Martin during their scuffle that ended in tragedy. The issue is not about truth or what events transpired, but about adopting a particular story that defines us as a people.
There is Trayvon’s story of how terrible it is to stigmatize a person. The story tells us of how it is a horrendous injustice for a Black man to always be looked upon with suspicion and fear, and that in some way good people have to fix this problem, which may even mean public ostracism and protest against any person, group, or institution that continues to carry on such evil. If the very laws of the land give enable people to stigmatize or racial profile, such laws need to be struck down.
There is the George’s story of a man trying to be civic minded in taking on the neighborhood watch duties for the evening who came across Trayvon acting suspiciously, which eventually escalated into the altercation and tragedy, albeit he wished things would have ended differently. The “stand-your-ground” law of George’s state should have then protected him from prosecution for having to use a gun in self-defense. The issue was never about race, since only a year prior George publically accused the police department in his own town of corruption, for trying to cover up the beating of a homeless Black man. George’s story is about a man trying to keep a neighborhood safe, and getting burnt for it.
Why should we be defined by one story or another? Certainly one can never condone the stigmatization of a person. Still, does not a person have the right to defend oneself? Perhaps the public square is polarized in trying to get people to be defined by one story over another, but there may be a third way of looking at things.
How do we make sense of this mess? We can certainly bring to the discussion table the complexities of racism, and while certainly the evils done against Black in America from slavery, lynching’s, castrations, sterilizations, to unethical medical experimentation are dark memories of the past, there is still need to discuss possible reparations and reconciliation. We can certainly talk and take action on how to make our world a safer place to live, and innocent people need to be protected from the evils committed by other people, groups, and institutions.
Do we have what it takes to make a positive change? If the world tells our children we are all but animals with larger brains that came about through unguided evolutionary processes base upon natural selection and survival of the fittest, if we tell them that right and wrong are subjective ideas, and people can make up their own minds on what moral codes to live by, what would we have given to George and Trayvon to have them to act with civility? If we have told both of them that we are all animals, why should they do anything but act upon their own fleshly instincts, and battle it out like two rams bucking heads to define the alpha male with the right to propagate the species?
The world wants us to think evolution is our origins. If that is the case, then we should be ready to bite down upon the bullet and see things in accordance to Darwin’s vision, which is “The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world” (Letter from Charles Darwin to W. Graham, 3 July 1881, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1, 316). Even “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Huxley picked up on this, when he wrote: “It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still the less superior, of the white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites” (Thomas Huxley, Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, [New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903], 20.). Fortunately, the Darwinian theory has never panned out with respect to the scientific evidence, so there is hope.
What the world is offering to us is far from adequate in dealing with the stories of Trayvon and George. What are the foundations for civility? The third way towards civility may begin with a rediscovery of our own humanity and the source of each person’s dignity. The ancients had hit upon something profound in speaking of the human’s bearing the imago Dei (image of God). They might have never realized the full implications of the very concept, but it ultimately forms the basis for the value of each person, the reality that we are all created equal, and that people have potential capacities to act in civility. The New Testament Gospel even poses a radical idea that sinful people whose imago Dei has been shattered can be restored to wholeness, and the very Holy Spirit of God can recreate them into a God directed people. It may very well be the case that we need a new heaven and new earth, which can only being with a person being born again into a new humanity.
~ WGN
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