Questions Remain after Ruling

The Trayvon Martin case has highlighted how racial conflict is still a central issue in America, and the not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman will do nothing to change that. The question of whether all Americans are equal before the law remains.

From a strictly legal perspective, the Florida ruling need not be considered particularly controversial. The state has passed laws, granting individual citizens far-reaching authority to act in self-defense.

Use of force is a legitimate response to a perceived threat to life and limb — even when it is possible to find safety. To a jury, this was a great obstacle to proclaiming that it was beyond reasonable doubt that George Zimmerman had shot Trayvon Martin in cold blood.

This law, however, is in itself hotly contested. Critics claim that it opens the door to a racial profiling that leads to people being treated differently depending on the color of their skin.

The debate is carried out all across America. In New York and other large cities, the police are accused of using racial profiling when individuals are stopped and searched. This happens more often to black citizens and other minority groups than white people.

Trayvon Martin is now being compared with Emmitt Till, Medgar Evers and other martyrs of the civil rights struggle, more than half a century ago. The America of today is not, in many senses of the expression, quite as black and white. George Zimmerman has a mixed background that may be described as multi-ethnic, with a Peruvian mother.

But some questions still linger that a ruling cannot answer, such as: What would have happened if George Zimmerman had been a large black man in a hoodie and baggy jeans, and the victim a properly dressed white man? Would the police, the news media and the public have reacted differently?

The fact that no answer to the question is given — that many people doubt equality before the law — means that the debate about racial profiling not just survives: It will probably be intensified by the not guilty verdict in Florida.