How would we feel about self defense laws if race were not an issue?
It's a minority view here, but there are people who object to laws allowing lethal force in self-defense. The majority view is an objection to laws that allow idiots to be away with avoidable violence, but it's the minority view I'd like to explore.
A hypothetical case is below the orange highway engineer prank.
It's really hard to keep race out of this! Which is an important point in itself. It's even hard to use names for the participants without invoking racial stereotypes.
OK, try this:
Inanna is a medical student. She's just finished an exam where she correctly answered questions about how quickly a strangulation victim can lose consciousness and die.
She is walking past a business with a security camera pointed at the sidewalk when Gilgamesh, a linebacker on the high school football team, jumps out of the bushes (there are actual bushes in this story). Gilgamesh is built like, duh, a linebacker and outweighs Inanna in addition to having grossly superior upper body strength.
The surveillance tape, retrieved by the town's competent and diligent police (the town police are competent and diligent in this story) shows Gilgamesh knocking Inanna backwards and leaning over her grabbing her throat. The tape then shows a flash and Gilgamesh falling over. The time stamp on the video is seconds before the 911 record of Inanna calling for an ambulance (hoarsely) to treat throat injuries and a gunshot wound. She even attempts first aid. The hospital fails to save Gilgamesh.
Inanna, then, has killed an unarmed 17-year-old. Who has a grieving family, and who had a future.
The situation is free of all the questions that come from unreliable witnesses, poor investigation, and racial bias. In order to allow focusing just on self-defense law, many of the facts are diametrically opposite to That Case.
Is Inanna ethically justified in having killed someone because she was in fear of her life? Should the law permit her to go free? Is a law that allows her conduct a just law?
Some people here seem to believe the answers to be "no". That's worth a discussion.
After that comes the question of whether a law with the word "reasonable" in it is definite enough to be applied fairly in a racist world. That's a practical question, with plenty of evidence to back up an answer.
There's also the question of how far from innocence she's allowed to get before the shooting is no longer justifiable. For example, I would lose any sympathy for her if she'd been following Gilgamesh with her gun drawn.