from interview posted at Politico dot-com
In terms of the defense’s approach, I think a lot of it is really similar. It’s almost as if what happens in these cases is the defense goes and looks at the other past cases to see how they did it and what they did. Like I was saying before, one pattern I see in both the trial of George Zimmerman and the trial of the McMichaels and Bryan is the defense reversing the roles of victim and perpetrator to make it appear the unarmed Black young man — in Trayvon’s case a boy, a teenager, and in Ahmaud Arbery’s case, a young man — appear as monstrous and frightening as possible. So that’s one thread of continuity is the framing of Black masculinity as a lethal threat in those cases.
The other thing that happens is the framing of white masculinity as good citizenship, as good guys with guns. And I do want to acknowledge that George Zimmerman is Latino. He’s not technically a white person, either. However, when police see him walking down the street, they don't assume that he is a person of color. There’s this idea that “good citizens” can go out and patrol other people’s property with firearms and threaten people’s lives in the interest of protection of property. They’re playing cops, basically.
And in George Zimmerman’s case, and in Kyle Rittenhouse’s case, they’re totally getting away with it based on the claim that they were in fear for their lives. That’s the other trope, too: The magic phrase is “I was in fear for my life.” There are certain people for whom that becomes the magical, exonerating incantation. When police say it in a courtroom after killing, especially a person of color, the police are given the benefit of the doubt. When these white and white-passing armed citizens say that they were in fear for their life, they’re given the benefit of the doubt, and that’s the other pattern that we see here.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/24/ahmaud-arbery-trial-self-defense-523280
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