Stand Your Ground Law - The Jail Free Card If You Are Not Black

Women who are being beaten up: stand your ground, just don't expect the law in Florida to back you up behind the stand-your-ground law if you are black, and don't expect Stevie Wonder to understand.

So it is a sleepy Sunday afternoon, when the social media networks are set on fire with the breaking news that George Zimmerman was found, 'not guilty', under the stand-your-ground law which allows someone to use deadly self-defence if they believe their life is in danger. 

The only one consequently then who has the potential weight of guilt of being dangerous, would then be the person who could no longer speak to defend himself: Travyon Martin, as he was silenced by his stiff, lifeless jaw in his deceased buried 17-year-old body.

Zimmerman claimed he acted out of self-defence. The funeral director added that there were no signs of a fight or scuffle with no knuckle bruising or any such evidence on his body. The law defended this deviant claim as Zimmerman left the safety of his SUV to hunt down a young black male who he, he had earlier reported to the police as saying, "This guy looks like he is up to no good. He is on drugs or something," even after the police dispatch was to not follow Martin.

 Zimmerman used the words, "Fucking punks. These assholes, they always get away." Zimmerman pursued to followed an unarmed young boy who committed no crime, except purchasing a bag of skittles and a soft drink as he walked back to his gated community at the Retreat at Twin Lakes. Zimmerman had become a self-appointed guardian of the community for "punks" like this.

So the law feels it right protect Zimmerman, the same way the Holocaust protected blue-eyed Germans. Why shouldn't we believe that the law is put in place to protect us black and ethnic minorities even though we are grossly under-represented in the UK and US political justice system? Racism still occurs in many subtle forms and one of them is oppression of justice through this so-called law of justice. 

I'll go even further to say the political system is darn right racist. 

The Department of Justice information showed that African-Americans jail time is almost 60 percent longer than white sentences. Also individuals who are black are 30% more likely to go to jail than their white counterparts after the same crime is committed. It is a modern-day, legal slavery, because the law which was set up to protect us, creates this invisible division based upon the visibility of your pigment. 

Talking about slavery and the law, there are women who experience the modern day version of slavery in their own homes under the control of their oppressor: their partner. The stand-your-ground law is surely in place for women like this who are oppressed to the point of rage, when they finally are triggered off and shoot bullet holes into the wall instead of in their husband, like in the case of Marissa Alexander.

Surely the stand-your-ground law is for such a case?

She got 20 years in prison.

It makes no sense? I forgot to mention she was black.

Make sense now?

In this case the state attorney who oversaw the case, Angela Corey stated, "Just because no one was harmed in the incident doesn't make the shooting any less a punishable crime". Yet Corey who was special persecutor in the Zimmerman's case somehow allowed the stand-your-ground law to be justifiably used in this unjustifiable circumstance which end up in the death of a young boy. She didn't have much to say about that.

Anyone with two cents for a brain could see that this is not justice, for a black woman being beaten by her husband. The law should stand like an older brother ready to fight overweight bullies, not to join in with the bullying, and then make it a fight about race: that just adds stinging salt to the wound. And then maybe some diet un top of it to make it infected and for the pain to last longer.

Basic legal law in the UK has the understanding that 'loss of control' can be immediate or delayed in cases of continuous abuse of a violent partner over a period of time, as based upon the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case, who killed her husband but her sentence was changed from murder to manslaughter, receiving 3 years and 4 months, the exact amount of time she had already served.

But for women who experience domestic violence in Florida, don't even think about the law defending you, especially if you are black. 

For young boys who walk the streets of Florida in search for a sweets and get shot, don't even think for the law to defend you either, especially if you are black. 

If you on the other hand are not to keen on black people and want to search the streets for a back person to shoot and kill, then please use the stand-your-ground law. Of course it is understandable, they are black and definitely dangerous and need to be wiped out. 

I think this is called the black Holocaust. 

You can probably see I am not the biggest fan of how the stand-your-ground law is being misused in the USA but similarly, I also think to abolish it would cause even less justice to be served. 

Stevie Wonder recently stated that he will not perform in Florida or any state that upholds the stand-your-ground law. I commend the thought behind the action, but I truly believe this allows self-defence to not be taken into account in special circumstances such as the Alexander and Ahluwalia case. 

What we should be fighting for as ethnic minorities, is in this timeless speech which would have been spoken 50 years ago next month by Martin Luther King: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character", may I add, with the justice of a fair stand-your-ground law.

Stevie Wonder that is what we should be fighting for, don't you think?