The bitter debate raging over the acquittal in a Florida trial over the shooting of a black, unarmed 17-year-old underlines deep divides in the United States over race, guns and the media.
George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer, has been found not-guilty of second-degree murder and a lesser manslaughter charge in the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old walking home after buying candy in Sanford, Florida.
Defence attorneys argued during the trial that Zimmerman had shot Martin in self defence. He had followed Martin first in a car, and then on foot. Zimmerman claimed that Martin had then attacked him.
Zimmerman’s acquittal unleashed dismay in the black community, where some people decried the result as a licence to kill young African-American men. On the other side, many conservatives said the trial was hyped out of proportion by a left-leaning US media and civil rights groups looking for martyrs.
America’s top justice official, Eric Holder, expressed worry about his own young African-American son in the wake of the verdict. Holder, the nation’s second highest-ranking black government official after President Barack Obama, said that he had to sit down with his 15-year-old son and warn him about the dangers of being young, black and male in America - just as his father did with him a generation ago.
Holder’s Justice Department is studying whether it can initiate a federal civil rights probe into the case. But legal experts are doubtful that there is enough evidence of racial bias to merit federal intervention.
Holder, meanwhile, has signalled his intention to go after the “stand-your-ground” laws like the one in Florida and more than 20 other US states that condone killing in self defence. Florida police officials used that law to justify not investigating Martin’s death and not arresting Zimmerman for more than six weeks after the killing.
Civil rights group says the laws are used disproportionately in favour of whites and against blacks.
In the US almost one in four black men between the ages of 18 to 34 say they have been treated unfairly by police during the past 30 days, according to a Gallup poll. This group is more likely than blacks of other ages and Hispanics of the same age to say so.
After the verdict, Obama said the verdict should prompt a discussion on gun violence as he called for calm.
The strong passions the Zimmerman verdict has incited demonstrate how much race still courses through politics in America. The days of legal segregation and institutional discrimination may have been over in the US, but the racial divide has still not been bridged completely.