Last year, I was in Pennsylvania for the trial of Jerry Sandusky. This year, thanks to another coincidental planning of my family’s vacation, I was in Florida for George Zimmerman’s trial. But while the Sandusky case was almost too uncomfortable to talk about, it would be wrong to avoid discussing the implications of the Zimmerman case.

Because of the lack of evidence and a poorly prepared case, the prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman was guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter. Zimmerman was acquitted July 13. He is the only living person who knows exactly what happened the night of Trayvon Martin’s death, so it’s pointless to debate Zimmerman’s innocence as if I know any better than the jurors. But it is important to recognize the role that race played in the murder of Martin and the verdict of the trial.

Although both the prosecution and the defense claimed that this case had nothing to do with race, the racial implications of the shooting and the verdict are the very reason that this case deserves so much attention.

One of the most recurring images I have seen on different social media sites in the past week compares the death of Trayvon Martin to that of Marley Lion.

Lion was murdered while resting in his car in a Charleston, S.C., parking lot. He was white and the four men who were arrested in connection to his murder are black. His death has not received the kind of national attention that Martin’s has.

The victims share some similarities — both boys were 17 years of age, and both were unarmed and not doing anything illegal at the time of their respective murders. However, Lion’s murder was caught on tape while in Martin’s case, Zimmerman was the only witness.

Charleston attorney Charlie Codon said that the Lion case “fit a standard, robbery-type case” while Martin’s murder “had all these other factors.” He called the comparison a stretch.

Elizabeth O’Neill, the South Carolinian mother who created the viral image that compared the two murders, said that the graphic was meant to draw attention to the Marley Lion case. “It doesn’t matter what color your skin is … Two mothers still lost their son,” explained O’Neill. However, many of the tens of thousands of people who commented on the Facebook photo believed it was “reverse racism” that made Martin’s death more prominent in national news than the case of Lion.

Both of these murders have racial implications. The murder of Trayvon Martin suggests that he was profiled by Zimmerman. While on the phone with a 911 dispatcher as he followed Martin, Zimmerman said, “F***ing punks. These a**holes, they always get away.” There had been some unsolved burglaries in the neighborhood, and the suspects were only described as young, black males. Along with hundreds of thousands of other Floridians, Martin fit this vague description.

As Lisa Bloom, the lawyer, author and NBC news legal analyst explained in her recent Op-Ed contribution to The New York Times, “By the defense’s logic, all young African-American males in the neighborhood would warrant a call to the police for walking while black — this in a racially diverse, middle-class community that is 20 percent African American.”

Zimmerman approached and subsequently shot and killed Martin based on his illogical fear that he may have been up to no good.

Lion was also racially profiled, but the four black men who were arrested after his murder were not scared of Lion, as Zimmerman was of Martin. The men wanted to steal from Lion, possibly because they saw his skin color as synonymous with wealth.

Although neither of these scenarios warranted a murder, both illustrate false preconceptions that are unfortunately accepted by many Americans — that blacks should be feared because of their tendency to act violently, and whites should be regarded as having money.

While newspaper headlines have claimed that the Zimmerman verdict sends “the wrong message,” it is not news to the black community that whites have a distinct advantage once any case reaches the legal arena.

To deny that the Zimmerman case has racial implications is to ignore the fact that racism still exists in the United States. Though our laws themselves cannot be racist, people can. And as long as our peers continue to hold racially discriminatory views, a jury of our peers cannot be trusted to make unbiased decisions.