If you haven’t caught it yet, I highly suggest taking the time to see the new film from Ken Burns documenting the wrongful convictions of five black and Latino teenagers who were arrested and charged with brutally attacking and raping a white female jogger in Central Park.
News media swarmed the case, calling them a ”wolfpack.” The five would spend years in prison for a crime they didn’t commit before the truth about what really happened became clear.
What does this have to do with the George Zimmerman case?
Everything.
Whenever passions are inflamed, reason and deliberation are the first casualties.
We are angry!
And after all, we know what happened. Even though we weren’t there…
I don’t know whether George Zimmerman was acting in self-defense or not, because I wasn’t there.
But what I do know–and what this film makes painfully clear–is that when we let things other than evidence–like race–cloud our judgment, bad things can happen.