Hypotheticals

Since Saturday night, Facebook has been filled with liberals posting nonsense about the Zimmerman verdict. I guess that’s nothing new, other than the topic of the nonsense. But it is particularly silly nonsense. Many of them attempt to claim that the verdict was racially motivated by suggesting that the outcome would have been different if the people’s races were reversed.

Here is one example, word for word: “If a black man went into a white neighborhood and picked a fight with a white kid and then shot him, he would be on death row right now.”

I understand the concept of a role reversal, but let’s compare this hypothetical case to the real case of Zimmerman/Martin. Zimmerman is Hispanic and the neighborhood is racially mixed. Zimmerman lives in the neighborhood, so he didn’t “go into” the neighborhood. Trevon Martin does not live there. The jury spent two weeks looking at all of the evidence, including the best case that the prosecutor could put together, and was not convinced that Zimmerman picked the fight. The instructions to the jury said that if the jury determined that Zimmerman instigated the violent confrontation, his claim of self defense was not valid. So there is no connection between the hypothetical situation and the real one. All that can be concluded is that the poster believes that in a completely different situation, the jury would decide differently, based on the facts. That should be the case regardless of the race of any of the participants.

If a conservative made such an inapplicable hypothetical role reversal argument he would be laughed clear back to a remedial rhetoric class.

But the silliness goes beyond that.

Liberals keep saying that Zimmerman provoked Martin. How? By getting out of his car. In his own neighborhood. The nerve of some people! Zimmerman really had it coming. I’ll remember never to get out of my car in my own neighborhood, because I might be jumped by a thug, and if I defend myself it will be my own fault.

Liberals suggest that Zimmerman is a wannabe cop, which is somehow worse than being a wannbe gangsta.

One liberal said that the moral of the verdict is "You see a black kid, you shoot him".  Well, only if he jumped you, broke your nose, and is straddling you bashing your head on the concrete, as the only eyewitness in the Zimmerman case testified.

Others argued that the case demonstrates the problems with "Stand your ground" laws which say that a person whose life is being threatened does not have a duty to retreat before using lethal force to defend himself, as opposed to other states which only allow self defense when you have retreated until your "back is against the wall". Must I point out that Zimmerman's back was against the sidewalk?

Let’s be generous and assume that some liberal has successfully come up with a hypothetical situation which is equivalent except that the races are reversed. I don’t believe that there is a jury in this country which would convict someone who was walking in his own neighborhood, which is still legal last I checked, who defended himself while his head was being cracked against a sidewalk. In 2013, you might find one ignorant, racist individual here or there, although they are not all that common, and that one person might think that a black person couldn’t possibly need to defend himself from a white person. But you won’t get a jury made up entirely of such people. It is just not possible, particularly because the defense attorney has a say in the makeup of the jury. To convict a person of a felony requires a unanimous decision of the jury, and that just won’t happen today. To anyone who says that a black person is automatically convicted of killing a white person, I have two little letters just for you: OJ. You'll say that case was different. Yup. It wasn't self defense.

But again let’s be generous and assume that somehow the prosecutor has succeeded in stacking the jury with racists and they convict the hypothetical black man for shooting the white kid instead of just letting his head continue to be bashed into the sidewalk. That would be a wrong verdict, wouldn’t it? That is the whole point of the argument. The claim is that America is racist and a black man would be wrongly convicted in the same situation all because of his race.

Isn’t that an admission that the Zimmerman verdict was correct? A jury which is not racist would acquit the black man who defended himself. A just and colorblind jury should also acquit a white, Hispanic, Asian, or purple polka-dotted man who defended himself in the equivalent situation. So liberals, by your own hypothetical argument, the jury in the non-hypothetical Zimmerman case acted exactly as a just and colorblind jury should have acted. The creepy-ass cracker is not the one who injected race into the situation.