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Justice for Oscar Grant: If Only the System Worked for All People

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The color of my skin affords me a certain level of privilege. I can take comfort in the fact that unless I put a black bandana over my face while at a protest or try to videotape something that law enforcement believe I am not supposed to be filming I will likely never experience the level of brutality, suspicion, rudeness, and belligerence that communities of color often experience at the hands of police especially in the inner city.It's not something I wish to be proud of but rather a reality that has been created as a result of over two hundred and fifty years of systemic racism in America.

While we may not like to think we live in a systemically racist country, that's not really a luxury we should be allowed---We should have to confront that reality time after time until we as a society get the moral fortitude and courage to erase the systemic racism in our society.

The murder of the young black male, Oscar Grant, on a BART platform in Oakland along with the trial and verdict are further examples of systemic racism. The videos clearly showed what happened: murder. Yet, the transit officer, Jonathan Mehserle, who shot Grant, was found guilty not of second-degree murder but instead involuntary manslaughter.

Communities who have come together in solidarity to support Oscar Grant rightfully note that the fact that he was found guilty of anything is a welcome precedent, something to be happy about. Such acceptance of a verdict that clearly does not fit the crime seems like the result of decades and decades of demoralization and marginalization.

The definition of involuntary manslaughter is a crime in which the victim's death was unintended. Watch the video. Watch Mehserle pull out the gun. The gun's trigger did not go off accidentally.

Mehserle's defense was that he meant to pull out his taser and instead pulled out a gun. If Oscar Grant had been a white Honor Roll student, this defense would have been laughable. Obviously, as he was putting his hand on the trigger to pull the gun out he would have wondered why it didn't feel like a taser and quickly moved his hand over to grab the weapon of choice he intended to use on Grant.

Mehserle did not use this as his defense. Instead, he claimed he had meant to grab his taser and, when he pulled out his taser, it happened to be a gun. Or so the family of Oscar Grant, his friends, and all those who have had loved ones lost in similar circumstances are supposed to believe.

That he claimed he was going to use a taser and grabbed the gun accidentally instead doesn't let him off the hook even if you suspend logic for a moment and let that absurdity stand. Grant was laying face down on the ground when he went for his taser. Mehserle would have had to feel threatened by Grant to grab it. Since Grant is already subdued, the next possibility is that Mehserle was overcome with malicious intent and wanted to use force on Grant; he wanted to take him down like every other gangbanger he ever took down on the streets of Oakland.

What's important to note is that when Mehserle was detaining Grant, Oscar Grant was not the Oscar Grant his family knew or the person his friends knew. He was not the person the public has read about in newspapers or heard about in eulogies given by family members. He was a gangbanger, a delinquent, a young black male--a person police officers in this country traditionally exhibit zero tolerance or concern for. In fact, the greater society usually displays a complete disdain for the wider population of young black males especially if they dress like they are "street kids" or part of a gang.

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Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He also produces and co-hosts the weekly podcast, "Unauthorized Disclosure." He was an editor for OpEdNews.com
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