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By Shavana Abruzzo
Brooklyn Daily
In a perfect world, there would be no racial divides, no unreconciled deaths, and no need for a trial by jury.
Until such time, we place our faith in a time-honored judicial system, entrusted to render verdicts beyond a reasonable doubt. Like the July 13 ruling in Florida, where jurors acquitted George Zimmerman of the death of Trayvon Martin.
The decision was made by lawfully selected Americans, who heard both sides and determined with the legal and moral authority bound to them that the Hispanic defendant was defending himself when he fatally shot the doomed African-American teenager. No happy ending there.
But judging from the reaction of offended race-baiters, who looted, rioted, and disrespected cops to vent their frustrations, one would think that despots had made the ruling from behind the fortresses of a rogue regime, instead of a jury of peers in a democratic nation that is a civil rights champion.
No merrymaking, no applause, and no screams of joy greeted the verdict because decent Americans — white and black — were painfully mindful that a human life had been tragically lost. Thankfully, it didn’t turn out like the orgy of retribution that was displayed on Oct. 3, 1995, when a black man accused of killing two white people was found not guilty during the so-called “trial of the century.”
On that day, many Americans erupted obscenely into cheers on the streets and sprang with joy from church pews, as football Hall-of-Famer O.J. Simpson was acquitted of butchering his wife, Nicole Brown-Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, in a dual murder trial that captivated the nation and exacerbated racial tensions.
“Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck,” Simpson attorney Robert Shapiro later confessed.
Zimmerman’s relatives reacted to his verdict with comparative grace. No such decorum from the family of The Juice, whose sister Shirley Baker kvelled, “I just feel like standing on top of this table and dancing a jig.”
Imagine the cataclysm, if Zimmerman supporters had done the same?
Affronted masses should respect the law because it has spoken, and instead direct their vigorous energies to the epidemic of black-on-black crime. Are those victims more dispensable because their perpetrators were not white?
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Read Shavana Abruzzo's column every Friday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail here at sabruzzo@cnglocal.com.