{"id":5937,"date":"2013-07-15T22:43:06","date_gmt":"2013-07-15T10:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=5937"},"modified":"2013-08-23T15:04:35","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T03:04:35","slug":"the-racism-in-the-trayvon-case-is-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=5937","title":{"rendered":"The racism in the Trayvon case is here:"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\nThe justification [of self-defense]&#8230; is not available to a person who&#8230; initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless&#8230; Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm&#8230;.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.leg.state.fl.us\/statutes\/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&#038;Search_String=&#038;URL=0700-0799\/0776\/Sections\/0776.041.html\">There&#8217;s the racism<\/a>. Right there. <\/p>\n<p>It all hinges on that &#8220;reasonable belief&#8221;. In the culture of racial anxiety and safety paranoia that dominates certain swathes of the USA, it is much easier for a jury to accept that a white man reasonably believes he is in such danger from a black man, than the reverse.<\/p>\n<p>(Note that the accused doesn&#8217;t need to be a racist for this to have an effect. Nor does the judge, nor the prosecution or defence, nor the jury.)<br \/>\n(Yes, Zimmerman wasn&#8217;t white. Still counts.)<br \/>\n(Yes, the legislation says that the basis of the belief must be the degree of force. Still counts. A punch from a black man is straight-up more terrifying than a punch from a white man.)<br \/>\n(The blockquote above is my selective quoting from the relevant Florida legislation, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2013\/07\/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice\/277782\/\">as excerpted by Ta-Nehisi Coates &#8211; read his post too<\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The justification [of self-defense]&#8230; is not available to a person who&#8230; initially provokes the use of force against himself or herself, unless&#8230; Such force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm&#8230;. There&#8217;s the racism. Right there. It all hinges on &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=5937\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The racism in the Trayvon case is here:<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[115,154,155,156,29],"class_list":["post-5937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything-political","tag-fear","tag-racism","tag-trayvon","tag-us-culture","tag-us-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-1xL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5938,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5937\/revisions\/5938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}