Scholar examines similarities between predator drone strike victims and "stand your ground" victims

Scholar examines the similarities between predator drone strike victims and "stand your ground" victims.

Attorney General Eric Holder made headlines after the announcement of the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial when he condemned the "stand your ground laws" operating in states like Florida, Texas and some twenty other US states, as having contributed to the violence that took young Trayvon Martin's life on February 25, 2012.

"We must stand our ground to ensure that our laws reduce violence and take a hard look at laws that contribute to more violence than they prevent," Holder explained in his speech to the NAACP national convention in Orlando, Florida. "It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense," he continued, as they have "unfortunately... victimised too many who are innocent."

President Obama's remarks on the Martin case - which aides made sure the media knew were made without a teleprompter (cue feelings of "authenticity" here) - were even more direct. Criticising the alleged propensity of stand your ground laws to encourage violence (something that is in fact backed up by the increase in shootings in states that have enacted such legislation), he declared that "Trayvon Martin could have been me".

What's more, rather than a Clintonian attempt to feel the pain of the Martins, or the nation more broadly, he sought to enlighten white Americans to the specific pain with which almost every African American lives because of the ongoing legacy of racism, and through it, the very specific prism through which the community interpret events like Martin's killing.

Both the president and his attorney general's remarks were powerful reminders of how policies and laws based on fear, prejudice and an uncritical support for violence as a solution to potential threats do more harm than good. They increase enmity and distrust while doing little to tackle the violence they were supposed to address.