PUBLIC FORUM: 07.18.13 - Why George Zimmerman was acquitted finds its roots in white supremacy movement.

Ajury has found George Zimmerman not guilty of all charges in connection with the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. But although the verdict came as a surprise to some people, it makes perfect sense to others. This verdict is a crystal-clear illustration of the way white supremacy operates in America.

Throughout the trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman jury” in a Seminole County courtroom, adding that most of them were mothers. That is true – but five of the six jurors were white, and that is profoundly significant for cases like this one. We also know that the lone non-white juror was seen apparently wiping a tear during the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But, that tear didn’t ultimately convince her or the white jurors that Zimmerman was guilty of anything; instead, not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and killing a black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”

ZIMMERMAN’S APPARENT IDEOLOGY – ONE THAT IS SUSPICIOUS OF BLACK MEN IN HIS NEIGHBORHOOD – IS ONE THAT ADHERES TO WHITE SUPREMACY.

In the last few days, Latinos in particular have spoken up again about Zimmerman’s race, and the “white Hispanic” label especially, largely responding to social-media users and mass-media pundits who employed the term. Watching Zimmerman in the defense seat, his sister in the courtroom and his mother on the stand, one can’t deny the skin color that informs their experience. They are not white. Yet Zimmerman’s apparent ideology – one that is suspicious of black men in his neighborhood, the “assholes who always get away” – is one that adheres to white supremacy. It was replicated in the courtroom by his defense, whose team tore away at Rachel Jeantel, questioning the young woman as if she was taking a Jim Crow-era literacy test.

[Editor’s note: Some of the cruelest bits of social media that played out during the Zimmerman trial were directed at Jeantel, who was slammed by everyone from anonymous white racists on Twitter to Olympian Lolo Jones, who compared Jeantel to the Tyler Perry character “Madea.”]

It was a defense that, during closing, cited slave-owning rapist Thomas Jefferson, played an animation for the jury based on erroneous assumptions, made racially coded accusations about Trayvon Martin emerging “out of the darkness,” and had the audacity to compare the case of the killing of an unarmed black teenager to siblings arguing over which one stole a cookie.

When Zimmerman was acquitted, it wasn’t because he’s a so-called white Hispanic. It’s because he abides by the logic of white supremacy, and was supported by a defense team – and a swath of society – that supports the lingering idea that some black men must occasionally be killed with impunity in order to keep society safe.

Media on the left, right and center have been fanning the flames of fear-mongering, speculating that people – black people especially – will take to the streets. That fear mongering represents a deep white anxiety about black bodies on the streets, and echoes Zimmerman’s fears: that black bodies on the street pose a public threat. But the real violence in those speculations is that they silence black anxiety. The anxiety that black men feel every time they walk outside the door – and the anxiety their loved ones feel for them as well. That white anxiety serves to conceal the real public threat: that a black man is killed every 28 hours by a cop or vigilante.

People will take to the streets, and with good reason. They’ll be there because they know that, some people do always get away – and it tends to be those strapped with guns and the logic of white supremacy at their side.

AURA BOGADO writes about racial justice and immigration for The Nation. She is based in New York City.