It does no service to anti-racism efforts when racist motivations are asserted without evidence.
I say this in light of CNN commentator Keith Boykin’s misrepresentation of the Florida shooting last Thursday that took the life of a 28 year-old man, Markeis McGlockton.
Video of the incident outside a gas station in Clearwater shows a man, Michael Drejka, arguing with McGlockton’s girlfriend, Britany Jacobs, over her decision to park in a handicapped space. Returning from inside the gas station, McGlockton pushes Drejka to the ground. Drejka then pulls out a handgun and shoots McGlockton.
While the video suggests Drejka’s reaction was excessive and morally unjustified, Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense law means that Drejka hasn’t committed any legal offense, so he won’t be charged with a crime.
But while this is an obvious tragedy, it’s important to keep to the facts here. Unfortunately some are doing the opposite. Take CNN commentator Keith Boykin’s assessment of the shooting.
So under Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, armed white people can harass and threaten black people at will and put their lives in danger, but if an unarmed black person dares to respond to the threat, then the armed white person is allowed to shoot and kill them? https://t.co/8k31g1E0ZP
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 23, 2018
While we don’t know what was said between Britany Jacobs and Drejka and whether the latter did indeed threaten Jacobs, there is no evidence to suggest that Drejka has avoided prosecution because he is white and McGlockton was black.
It’s also to ignore what followed another shooting at a different Florida gas station last Tuesday.
In that shooting at a Polk County gas station two days before the McGlockton tragedy, a man stole three packs of beer and walked outside to his car. The store owner — a man of South Asian ethnicity — then shot the thief, a black man, as he attempted to escape. Yet because the evidence suggests the store owner lacked the justifiable concern of self-defense, he has now been charged with murder.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a strong argument to be made that Florida law needs an imminence of threat consideration in the action of “stand your ground” laws like that involved in the McGlockton shooting. But on the facts we have, that shooting is not a case study in Florida racism.
