The acquittal by jury of Goerge Zimmerman who shot and murdered the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was emblematic of the consistent racism and double standard used in the treatment of minority groups or those deemed "Other" in the U.S. and around the world. Where is there justice in a world in which so many people suffer oppression and in which those who choose to use violence as a way to address and deal with their hatred and fear often seem to triumph?

Jewish theology holds that there is a karmic order, so that evil actions will not always run the world. Justice and compassion are both essential to the survival of the planet. Unlike many religions that focus on individual sinners and imagine that they will be punished in some future not currently verifiable--for example in a heaven or hell after life, or in a reincarnation in some form that provides rewards or punishments for how one lives in this world, most of Jewish theology sees karma as playing out on a societal scale, and over the long run.

If Trayvon Martin were not a young black male, he would be alive today. Despite the verdict, it's clear that George Zimmerman would never have confronted a young white man wearing a hoodie. He would, at the very least, have listened to the cops and stayed back. Trayvon Martin is dead because Zimmerman believed that "these guys always get away" and chose not to wait for the police.

Trayvon Martin's death shatters the convenient myths that blind us to reality. That reality, as the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board wrote, is that "black men carry a special burden from the day they are born."

Both the prosecutor and the defense claimed that the trial was not about race. But Trayvon Martin was assumed to be threatening just for walking while being young, black and male.

That is the reality that can no longer be ignored. Through the years, gruesome horrors -- the murder of Emmitt Till, the shooting of Medgar Evers in his front yard -- have galvanized African Americans and public action on civil rights. Trayvon Martin's death should do the same.

Did the ghosts of our slave-holding and Jim Crow past high-five each other in the Florida courtroom on Saturday? George Zimmerman was acquitted, but does that mean that American history was, too?

The experts who weighed in on the legal battle essentially noted that, in the absence of any witnesses other than Zimmerman, the prosecution couldn’t prove what had happened, or more to the point, couldn’t convincingly counter-argue his version of events – that he was returning to his car when Trayvon Martin assaulted him and threw him to the ground, forcing him to kill the boy in self-defense. Trayvon was dead; that left him, legally, voiceless and out of luck.

Hmm . . . wasn’t that the case anyway?

The incident blew into a national outrage because, initially, the boy’s killing was nothing at all in the eyes of the law. He was walking through a white, gated community, wearing a hoodie. Stand your ground! The police held the killer for a few hours, then let him go without charges.

It has been 30 days since Eric Holder called a secret meeting with a compliant press to get their input on when, and under what circumstances, they would like to be wiretapped by secret court order. A few days ago he released his new policy governing when the press could be wiretapped in order to prosecute reporters and their sources. The government-approved mainstream press uniformly thanked the Attorney General for only ignoring the Constitution a tiny little bit when it comes to them. They uniformly failed to note that the entire world is being bulk wiretapped, thus rendering said guidelines completely irrelevant. They also failed to note that the Attorney General has quietly appropriated the Right to define who and what the press is for the first time in history.