By John M. Crisp

Tribune News Service

It’s always chancy to write about somebody like Ahmaud Arbery.

Arbery is the 25-year-old black man who was killed by a shotgun blast on Feb. 23 during a confrontation with three white men in Glynn County, Ga.

Local authorities largely ignored the case until an incriminating video of the shooting surfaced. Public outrage ensued, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stepped in. Finally, on May 7, Gregory and Travis McMichael were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated assault.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Arbery. For the most part, I took a sympathetic perspective, maintaining that a black man should be able to jog through any neighborhood without being confronted by armed men who suspect him of a crime. The story here isn’t crime or a “citizen’s arrest” that got out of hand; the story is racism. Or so I argued.

But even as I wrote the column, I maintained a few misgivings. What if a black man, or Arbery himself, had been burglarizing houses in the neighborhood? Indeed, as this story developed a video surfaced of Arbery nosing around a house under construction in the area of the shooting. Nothing was stolen, but what if Arbery was actually casing the joint for a crime of opportunity?

What if post-shooting scrutiny reveals that Arbery had a criminal record? As it happens, the local newspaper reports that Arbery was indicted for bringing a gun to a 2013 high school basketball game, and in 2018 he was arrested for shoplifting.

So Arbery wasn’t perfect. And who knows what further scrutiny might reveal? But I’m still not very interested in this information. Why?

Because. It. Doesn’t. Matter.

The tendency to impugn the victims of racial violence is similar to the tendency to blame the victims of sexual assault. The suggestion that victims somehow “had it coming” is intentionally exonerative.

In fact, I suspect that efforts to blame Arbery will be on full display if the alleged murderers come to trial. The original police report relies on the testimony of Gregory McMichael, who reports that Arbery “began to violently attack Travis.”

The McMichaels’ attorneys will likely frame this incident as a matter of self-defense rather than murder. They will probably try to create a context that includes a history of wrongdoing and tries to tap into a stereotype of aggressive, violent black behavior than many Americans readily accept. And they will place Arbery in the middle of that context.

But what if Arbery did “violently attack” Travis McMichael? That deserves context, as well.

New York Times analysis of the video shows that the armed men tried to block Arbery’s path at least three times as Arbery attempts to retreat. Blocked a final time, Arbery may have felt desperate and threatened enough to defend himself by at last going on offense.

Or maybe the frustration and anger of being a black man in America finally got the best of Arbery.

Another video, from November 2017, shows a confrontation between Arbery and two Glynn County police officers.

Arbery is alone in a public park when the officers approach him because, they say, he was in “a known area for drugs and other criminal activity.”

The officers are reasonably polite and Arbery is reasonably cooperative, but the confrontation escalates until Arbery is searched for weapons and forced to his knees. He escapes a tasing only because an officer’s TASER misfired.

Throughout the incident, Arbery’s frustration and resentment are evident. He asserts that he has a job, working six days a week, and he comes to the park for a chance to “chill.”

In other words, he tries to convince the officers that he’s not what they think they see, another black man angling for a crime. He tells them: “You bothering me for nothing!”

Our judicial system abounds with wonderful rights: the right to a speedy trial; the right to an attorney; freedom from self-incrimination.

But the right that Arbery desired above all others in 2017 and when he was killed in 2020 precedes all others: The right to be left alone. Just like white people.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives in Georgetown, Texas, and can be reached at jcrispcolumns@gmail.com.