Whatever the verdict, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery has once more laid bare the entrenched racial barriers to equal justice that still exist in Georgia and in America.
On Monday, closing arguments began in the trial of the three white Georgia men who shot down Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man for the apparent crime of jogging while Black. Arbery, a former high school star athlete, stayed in shape by jogging. On that fateful day, jogging in broad daylight in Satilla Shores, Arbery was spotted by Gregory McMichael, who saw him “sprinting” past his house, which caused McMichael to assume he was running “away from something or someone,” according to his defense attorney. McMichael and his son grabbed their guns and — joined by a neighbor, William Bryan — chased Arbery in their pickup trucks as he tried to avoid them. Bryan repeatedly tried to sideswipe him, at one point forcing him into a ditch. Gregory McMichael screamed at him to “Stop, or I’ll blow your f—ing head off.” Finally, they cut Arbery off, with Gregory McMichael saying he was “trapped like a rat.” Under assault, with no way out, Arbery tried to defend himself, rushing the younger McMichael, who shot him three times with his shotgun. McMichael admitted on the stand that Arbery had no weapon. He claimed on the stand that Arbery had grabbed at his gun, but he told police on the scene that he could not remember that. Arbery’s murder is a modern-day version of a lynching. And what happened after the murder is haunting evidence that the institutionalized racism of the Old South still poisons.
