By the time Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father, arrived on the stand on day ten of the George Zimmerman trial, he had already been cast in unanticipated roles—grieving father, reluctant agitator, courtroom stoic—though none of that dimmed the discomfort of his latest turn: witness for the defense. His appearance proved to be the sharpest twist on Monday, a day that had already seen a witness compare the screams from Zimmerman’s fight with Trayvon with those of American soldiers during the Tet Offensive, and a live-action mixed-martial-arts tutorial featuring the lead defense counsel. It takes a certain kind of nerve to summon the father of the deceased as part of an effort to exonerate the man who killed him; it requires something greater than poise to endure being summoned. Toward the end of the cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Martin why he’d repeatedly listened to a 911 call in which the gunshot that killed Trayvon could be heard. His reply was jarring: “I was trying to understand why he got out of his car and chased my son.”

It’s doubtful that he was completely without answers. The knowledge that you can inspire fear in the most inadvertent of ways, that there is a protean set of descriptions that you always fit, is axiomatic of the black male experience in this country. This is knowledge fathers pass to sons just as sure as explaining how to tie a Windsor knot. The more salient question, the one that forms part of the core of this case—though it is unlikely to be posed, and certain not to be resolved in the Seminole County courthouse—is this: Is it ever possible for a white person to be suspicious?

There’s already been any number of indelible moments in this central Florida courtroom. Last week featured a scene out of King Solomon’s court, in which both the mother of the deceased and the mother of the defendant claimed it was her son’s voice screaming for help just before the shot punctuates the 911 call. A procession of witnesses testified about seeing one man atop another and striking him, though they couldn’t agree on the attacker. Their visual vagueness was matched by another theme—the common, enduring horror at realizing there was a man lying dead in the grass. Yet more than the conflicting testimony over who screamed for help, more than the question of which man was on top, this case is about a defendant’s presumed innocence and a dead man’s presumed guilt.

While speculation about the trial has centered on whether or not Zimmerman will take the stand, Trayvon Martin, in a real sense, already has. In a creeping set of rulings, Judge Debra Nelson decided to allow discussion of the traces of marijuana that were found in Martin’s system during his autopsy. The contours of the defense, like a great deal of the discussion of this case, are shot through with an antiquated brand of rape-think. What was he wearing? Was he high or drunk? Why was he out at night? Beneath these questions is a calcified skepticism toward Martin’s innocence that all but blurts out “He was asking for it.”

Amid their frustratingly uneven presentation, Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda and the rest of the prosecution have pegged their second-degree murder charges largely on the idea that Martin was losing the fight on February 26th of last year, that he shouted for help, and that Zimmerman, a vigilante would-be cop, shot and killed him anyway. In plotting their route to conviction, they necessarily bypass another set of questions. What if he wasn’t losing the fight? What if Zimmerman is the one who called for help? What if Martin did swing first? And, most crucially, is an unarmed black teen-ager ever entitled to stand his ground?

The answers to these questions have bearing that is more social than legal, but they’re inescapable in understanding how we got here in the first place and what this trial ultimately means. George Zimmerman got out of his car that night as an amateur deputy and protector of the Retreat at Twin Lakes gated community. Trayvon Martin was a visitor to that community. Nowhere in Zimmerman’s initial emergency call does he broach the idea that Martin might belong there, that he might actually be someone who warranted protection, too. Instead, there is the snap judgment that the teen-ager is one of the “fucking punks” who “always get away”—a judgment that Zimmerman’s supporters and the Sanford Police Department either co-signed or deemed reasonable enough to absolve him of responsibility for what ensued.

What remains frustratingly marginal in this discussion is the point Martin’s friend Rachel Jeantel raised in her testimony—that Martin himself was afraid, that a black person might assess a man following him in a car and on foot as a threat, never mind that he might have seen Zimmerman’s weapon and suspected his life was in danger. The defense paid a great deal of attention to the implications of Martin referring to Zimmerman as a “creepy-ass cracker,” but, to the extent that we think about the epithet, we’re concerned with the wrong C-word. Imagine George Zimmerman being followed at night, in the rain, by an armed, unknown black man and you have an encounter that far exceeds the minimal definition of “creepy.” Indeed, you have a circumstance in which anyone would reasonably fear for his life. Add a twist in which that black man fires a shot that ends a person’s life, and it’s hard to imagine him going home after a brief police interview, as Zimmerman did.

De la Rionda’s team is charged with prosecuting a crime, not a set of social attitudes that facilitate it. But whatever its legal merits, the prosecution’s approach has left intact the suspicion that Florida’s proactive self-defense laws are color-coded, intended for people in fearsome encounters with blacks, not blacks in fearsome encounters.

Read more of our coverage of the George Zimmerman trial and Trayvon Martin.

Photograph by Joe Burbank/Getty.