I don’t feel vindicated in my belief that George Zimmerman would be found “not guilty” for the killing of Trayvon Martin. For me, the U.S. criminal legal system has always been illegitimate. I consistently write on this blog that we cannot expect a fundamentally corrupt & unjust system to deliver any “justice” at all. This still holds.

I am concerned at the conflation of the “law” and “justice.” The two are not the same. That confusion has led some people to be angry when pundits suggest that the verdict reached by jurors in the Zimmerman trial was correct. I myself had tweeted last week that there was no way he’d be convicted of second degree murder based on the evidence presented at trial. I added that I didn’t think manslaughter was in the cards either. With Trayvon dead, the state’s burden to prove the case “beyond a reasonable doubt” seemed to me insurmountable both for reasons of law and for reasons of racism. By continuing to focus on the law, we will get drawn into an endless debate about procedure and lose sight of the need to uproot oppression and to seek actual justice. I’ll return to this idea in the coming days.

Today, above all, I am thinking of a mother, father, and brother who have lost their beloved son & best friend. I am thinking of the unfairness of demanding that they remain stoic, steadfast, pious, and exceedingly generous throughout this ordeal. I am thinking of the ways that black people are made to endure our suffering and pain on mute. I am wondering about where the “justice” is in this policing of black emotion and affect. The truth is that the dominant culture does not bestow its empathy on even ‘respectable’ black grief. ‘Angry’ black people are actively condemned but stoic and reasonable ones are lauded in passing & then quickly returned to invisibility.

Even before the verdict was delivered, Florida law enforcement released a PSA warning people to keep calm no matter the outcome of the Zimmerman Trial. Black people do not need to be told to be non-violent; the police should be admonished instead. Given the inordinate fire power that the police have at their disposal, I found their warning odd. After all, it’s mostly a suicide mission for marginalized people to violently confront state power. And most black people didn’t think that Zimmerman would be convicted anyway. An uprising was never in the cards.

The police weren’t the only ones preparing for black people to “riot.” Some purported black ‘leaders’ and others warned us to be ‘peaceful’ and to ‘respect the verdict’ of an illegitimate court. Here’s Russell Simmons tweeting something to this effect after the verdict was read: “I know many people are very upset about the verdict, but we must remain peaceful. No matter what, remain peaceful.” Most of these proclamations were issued from the comfort of their condos in gated communities. Their class privilege provides a buffer from the day-to-day stalking and targeting experienced by poor and working class black people. They proudly take up valuable space in the public square to act as middle people between the powerful and the marginalized.

To add insult to injury, many people came out of the woodwork to assert that black people are not sufficiently outraged about intra-racial violence. The contention is that since black people [obviously, according to them] don’t value black life then we deserve to be murdered by vigilantes at will. Yet as @JJ_bola wrote on Twitter: “No one EVER justifies the killing of a white person by saying white people kill each other too. EVER.” He’s right of course and that’s the tragic irony of white supremacy: it kills you while blaming you for your own death.

I’d like to end this post by reclaiming ‘ordinariness’ for black children. When our children are gunned down in cold blood, I want it to be enough that they were simply ordinary as opposed to ‘innocent.’ In the U.S., Black people will never be considered “innocent” and frankly it’s a label that we shouldn’t want to claim for ourselves. None of us is ‘innocent;’ most of us are just ordinary and flawed people. That should be enough to have the right to live.

Trayvon Martin was an ‘ordinary’ young black man. He was valuable in his ordinariness and I loved him for it. Rest in power, Trayvon, rest in power.