Last week, the Ahmaud Arbery trial came to a fateful conclusion.
The three men involved in the murder of the 25-year-old Georgia native were all convicted of murder. Writer Russ Bynum, in his 2021 article for AP News, “3 Men Charged In Ahmaud Arbery’s Death Convicted Of Murder”, writes, “the February 2020 slaying drew limited attention at first. But when video of the shooting leaked online, Arbery’s death quickly became another example in the nation’s reckoning of racial injustice in the way Black people are treated in their everyday lives.”
Greg McMichael, son Travis McMichael, and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan all engaged in the running down and trapping of Arbery that ended in his tragic shooting. As Arbery was running down a local Georgia suburb, the McMichaels grabbed guns and jumped in their pickup truck with Bryan accompanying, capturing the recorded video.
Now all three men face sentencing of life in prison. The jury in and of itself was an emotional reckoning with members of Arbery’s family being pushed to their emotional brink. The father and son suspected Arbery was a burglar which motivated their pursuit. The trial and verdict comes a year and nine months after Arbery’s death.
What was striking about the verdict was the disproportionality of the racial make-up of the jury being overwhelmingly white. In tandem, the argument that the three men were valid in their actions out of self-defense, alleging Arbery had retaliated with his fists, echoed the same sentiments of blaming the victim mentality other slain men and women color endured as well.
In this case, several elements of the argument echoed the Zimmerman trial where it was implied 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was a suspected criminal and the then Neighborhood Watch member was fulfilling his civic duty in his pursuit. What is unconscionable to digest in both cases is the defendants are implicitly blaming their intentional and racial terrorism acts on the race of their slain. And in both cases, neither Arbery nor Martin have the privilege to exonerate themselves.
Although sentencing has yet to be announced and hope is on the horizon, the work is still not done. The racial reckoning that coincided with the COVID-19 coronavirus made a space for more in-depth conversations about race to be had in households all over the world, but legislation and policy still have plenty of room to catch up.
Ahmaud Arbery is not a special case by no means and represents one of many.
Only time will tell how legislation and policy can truly exemplify the true solution of racial justice.
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