Post-Zimmerman vs Martin, An Imperfect World, and Where We Go Now

I think (redacted) hits the nail on the head, in a perfect world. But we live in an imperfect world where prejudice plays a part.

I do agree that we define other-than-white ethnicities differently than we do whites. I'm Scottish, Irish, English, Dutch, and German. And considering that neither the males nor the females in my family, gay, bi, or straight, can keep their pants on, there's a good chance that there's even more than that hiding in our genes. Wilkommen! 

Between the perfect and the imperfect are millions or billions, even, shades of grey. We are people, not paint chips at Lowe's; we're interactive, fluid, transmogrifying. We are this today, and that tomorrow. And we are emotional creatures who strive to be ruled by logic, but we're just too damned human to allow it to happen.

Zimmerman versus Martin will be a case study in law schools because of several factors - an apparently inept prosecution, a knock-knock joke defense, media coverage, public interest, and the fact that there are only 2 people, one now dead, who really know what happened that night. In my heart, I think Zimmerman is guilty, but I can'tprove that. And neither can any other person alive, save one.

The American system of jurisprudence acknowledges its weaknesses, but as (some say) Sir Winston Churchill observed about democracy, our system is "the worst form of..." justice "...except for all the others."

I wholly agree with (redacted) that, moving forward, we need to drop the labels. Humans have a need, and there is a bona fide reason, to label things. But when those labels become the problem, it's time to set them aside and move on to something else. 

After the OJ trial(s!), I thought we had a good opportunity to do just that, but we didn't. It may be that the reason we didn't exists on the surface of every member of humankind: The color of our skin.

If we can't move beyond the surface of those we meet, I fear that we'll never get to know what's inside them.