The Fire Next Time

BY CLARENCE BARR, II

If you find yourself stilled riled up over the Trayvon Martin travesty every time you see someone who resembles George Zimmerman, you might want to begin bracing yourself for even more anger.

Sometime in the next few weeks another trial will begin in Jacksonville involving yet another trigger-happy white guy who also gunned downed an unarmed Black teenager. And, arguably, the facts behind that case are even more tragic than in the Martin killing.

This time it wasn’t a hoodie that made a young Black male a target for death. It was his loud music.

According to police reports, 17-year-old Jordan Davis and his friends were sitting inside of a Dodge Durango listening to music outside of a convenience store when a man named Michael Dunn and his girlfriend pulled into the parking space beside them. While Dunn’s girlfriend went into the store to buy some wine, Dunn took it upon himself to tell Davis and his friends to turn down their tunes.

Of course, Dunn’s audacious command didn’t sit well with the teens who responded to Dunn’s bold request by turning their music up even louder while telling Dunn, in not so pleasant terms, to “beat it.” At that point an enraged Dunn (who would later tell police that he had no choice but to react the way he did after they “defied my orders”) retrieved his Taurus PT 9mm from his glove compartment and proceeded to fire ten shots into the truck, hitting Davis in the chest and killing him instantly.

In the aftermath Dunn would invoke the infamous ‘Stand Your Ground’ law as his defense saying that he feared for his life after seeing what he believed was a shotgun being raised by someone in the backseat. A claim that even Dunn’s girlfriend says he never mentioned to her the night of the incident.

The problem with Dunn’s story is that the police were on the scene within minutes of the shooting. And when they searched the truck the teens were driving, not only did they not find a shotgun, there wasn’t a weapon of any kind in the immediate vicinity around the vehicle.

Jordan Davis and his friends weren’t street thugs cruising for trouble as Dunn’s lawyer would assert during a press conference. They were 4 regular middle-class kids coming from the mall, listening to the music they loved, who decided to stand up to a bully who tried to impose his will on their freedom of expression. For that, one of them was murdered.

The thing that really stands out to me about Dunn, as with Zimmerman, is the similarities in the casual comfort both men displayed after their horrific actions. Zimmerman’s nonchalant way of having his wife informed that he shot someone was echoed in Dunn’s arrogance during his conversation with authorities who he initially told that he didn’t need a lawyer; as if his whiteness and the victim’s Blackness automatically made the shooting justifiable to the point where an investigation would be a waste of time.

The fact that these two men, separated by almost 20 years in age (Zimmerman is 28 Dunn is 45), each felt emboldened enough to take a Black life without much concern for the consequences, to me, speaks volumes on how the dehumanizing of Blacks still seems to be a very large part of the rearing process at the root of White American culture. I mean, let’s be honest, they had to learn it from somewhere.

But, even with that being the case, it’s hard for me to imagine Dunn receiving the same walking papers as Zimmerman. For starters there was no physical altercation. Secondly, there were a number of eye witnesses in a well lit area. And lastly, the man emptied a clip into a retreating vehicle occupied by unarmed, high school kids with spotless records. I just don’t see enough ground for him to stand on.

When it’s all said and done (no pun intended) Dunn should be heading to the same place where Zimmerman was supposed to go. Of course this is Florida and anything is bound to happen. But if another jury sees fit to set him free as well, then all I can say is Heaven help us because what would transpire next surely won’t be pretty.

Anyone wanting to contact Clarence Barr can reach him at: Clarence Barr, II, 43110-018; P. O. Box 7007; Marianna, FL 32447-7007. Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bulletin Publishing Company.