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Saletan: Everybody Missing The Point On Trayvon

Slate’s William Saletan says the frenzy of righteous commentary in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal reveals a big problem with our society. Excerpts: Everywhere you look, people feel vindicated in their bitter assumptions. They want action. But that’s how Martin ended up dead. It’s how Zimmerman ended up with a bulletproof vest he might […]

Slate’s William Saletan says the frenzy of righteous commentary in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal reveals a big problem with our society. Excerpts:

Everywhere you look, people feel vindicated in their bitter assumptions. They want action.

But that’s how Martin ended up dead. It’s how Zimmerman ended up with a bulletproof vest he might have to wear for the rest of his life. It’s how activists and the media embarrassed themselves with bogus reports. The problem at the core of this case wasn’t race or guns. The problem was assumption, misperception, and overreaction. And that cycle hasn’t ended with the verdict. It has escalated.

I almost joined the frenzy. Yesterday I was going to write that Zimmerman pursued Martin against police instructions and illustrated the perils of racial profiling. But I hadn’t followed the case in detail. So I sat down and watched the closing arguments: nearly seven hours of video  in which the prosecution and defense went point by point through the evidence as it had been hashed out at the trial. Based on what I learned from the videos, I did some further reading.

It turned out I had been wrong about many things. The initial portrait of Zimmerman as a racist wasn’t just exaggerated. It was completely unsubstantiated. It’s a case study in how the same kind of bias that causes racism can cause unwarranted allegations of racism. Some of the people Zimmerman had reported as suspicious were black men, so he was a racist. Members of his family seemed racist, so he was a racist. Everybody knew he was a racist, so his recorded words were misheard as racial slurs, proving again that he was a racist.

Saletan goes on to say the evidence shows that the 911 dispatcher didn’t tell Zimmerman to stay in his car. The wounds, blood evidence, and DNA didn’t match Zimmerman’s story of being a total punching bag, but it also didn’t back up the story of Martin as a “sweet-tempered child.” He calls Zimmerman a “reckless fool,” but not a murderer. And he attacks hotheads who are ignoring the complexity of what happened that night — for example, Martin’s suspicion that Zimmerman was a potential gay rapist — to make an ideological point. More:

They’re oversimplifying a tragedy that was caused by oversimplification. … [The killing] happened because two people—their minds clouded by stereotypes that went well beyond race—assumed the worst about one another and acted in haste. If you want to prevent the next Trayvon Martin tragedy, learn from their mistakes. Don’t paint the world in black and white. Don’t declare the whole justice system racist, or blame every gun death on guns, or confuse acquittal with vindication. And the next time you see somebody who looks like a punk or a pervert, hold your fire.

That makes a lot of sense.

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