Racial prejudice persists

Saturday night, blogger Cord Jefferson wrote this:

Tonight a Florida man’s acquittal for hunting and killing a black teenager who was armed with only a bag of candy serves as a Rorschach test for the American public. For conservatives, it’s a triumph of permissive gun laws and a victory over the liberal media, which had been unfairly rooting for the dead kid all along. For liberals, it's a tragic and glaring example of the gaps that plague our criminal justice system. For people of color, it’s a vivid reminder that we must always be deferential to white people, or face the very real chance of getting killed.

That sums it up, except for one thing, which is after all part of the mix that makes up the racial situation in America.

The six women jurors in this case are from -- and will go back to living in -- Sanford, Florida.  Living among neighbors, many of whom see the problem as coming from blacks, especially young black men.   And living in a community with a police force that has not shown itself to be the most sensitive to racial matters.

I am neither accusing nor excusing these women jurors, as to whether/how much race entered into their decision.   From every indication, they were hard-working and conscientious; and they may just not have believed that the evidence as presented allowed them to find guilt for manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt.   But their experiences and their attitudes have got to be part of the mix -- just as it was in the terrible event itself, and as it was in the police response, and as it was in the national outrage that Zimmerman was not arrested to start with.

Racial prejudice and racial conflict are pervasive and not just in the obvious ways.

Ralph