The truth is I haven't really written about the killing of Trayvon Martin. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that everyone else has. What can I write that hasn't been written. In general, I tend to stay away from the biggest news of the day and try to bring you stuff you might not see elsewhere.
The second reason is troubling even to me. There is something weird about all the white folks jumping on the bandwagon, so to speak, right now. Where has everyone been before NOW? Trayvon is hardly the first young African American male gunned down for being black. Usually, if anything at all, there is a small protest by African Americans. Sometimes the shooting gets more publicity and some white activists join in. This time it is like all these white folks decided here was an "easy" way to show that they aren't racist and don't have a prejudiced bone in their body. Easy, because everyone else is doing it. Easy, because nobody is going to get busted or attacked by cops at all these peaceful, handholding rallies. Easy, because none of these concerned whites have to give up any of the privileges their white skin gives them by going out and standing around for a while hearing some speeches...and then going back home to life as normal.
Anyway, there aren't ALL THAT MANY white folks out there anyway.
So damn, what is even easier to just be a white pundit sitting in front of a computer and typing out a few words about the shame of it all.
Better yet, you can be a white person reading the white pundit's punditry and tell a friend about it.
I realize this attitude of mine seems harsh and maybe it is all wrong. Maybe one day everyone woke up and said, "Hey, I need to get off my white ass and get out there and make a statement." Maybe?
Well, I am just another white guy, but the two posts below come from African American males who didn't just show up for the parade.
The first article below is from ColorLines. The second is from the Black Commentator.
You Got a Problem? Well, Now You Do
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Trayvon Martin had it coming, or so we will soon be led to believe. The surely unattractive details of his short life as a black man in America will tumble forward—his troubles in school, the weed baggie that got him suspended, the altercation in which police and George Zimmerman claim he was the aggressor. He was a maladjusted, Negro man-child, so ferocious he could kill an armed man with his bare hands. He had to die.
Yesterday, local law enforcement offered a preview of this old, familiar narrative when someone leaked Zimmerman’s account of the night to the Orlando Sentinel. According to the Sentinel, Zimmerman had given up his hunt of Martin and was returning to his SUV when the 17-year-old caught him by surprise. Do you have a problem, Martin is said to have asked, before answering for himself, “Well, you do now.” He reportedly began pummelling Zimmerman, leading the armed man to shoot and kill.
Sadly, it’s necessary to point out that there isn’t an imaginable scenario in which an armed man can shoot an unarmed child to death and it be okay. But set that obvious fact to the side. Trayvon Martin did in fact have it coming. He was born black and male in the United States and was thus marked for death. The cruelness of our economy and of our criminal justice system isn’t reserved for men or for black people. But there is a particularly gendered and particularly racist way in which black men are set upon in this country, most acutely those who don’t have the resources to push back. And it has a very long, still relevant history.
For the entirety of American history—from the first African captured and enslaved to the moment Geraldo Rivera opened his mouth to pimp Martin’s death for ratings—black men have been relentlessly caricatured as menaces to society. We were dangerous, so chattel slavery was necessary, and a nation’s wealth was born. We are still dangerous, so a police state is necessary in black neighborhoods all over this country, and the wealth of a prison-industrial complex flourishes. This is what Trayvon Martin’s murder is about. It’s not about his high school suspension. It’s not about his hoodie. It’s not even about Florida’s Kill at Will law, at least not at root. It’s about the enduring, dark fantasies to which America still clings, in order to justify a society in which more black men are locked up or on parole today than were enslaved in 1850—to pick just one of many indicators of the scale at which black men are battered. But we’re menaces; we’ve got it coming.
As black men, we’ve all got our strategies for dealing with the resulting morass of fear and loathing that we must navigate every day. Few of those tricks are healthy, unfortunately. Some work themselves to an early death in a vain effort to disprove the fantasy of their sloth and ignorance—see under, John Henry, Harold Washington, my father. Some fight and fight and fight until they can’t take it, then get the hell out—see under, DuBois, Baldwin, Ture. Most of us just duck and dodge the emotional bullets, try not to let the inevitable wounds fester into self-hate and do our best to keep it moving.
The strategies aren’t always heroic, either. Some black men go mad in pursuit of the self-reliance and individual will that’s supposed to save them, and end up like a bleary eyed, permanently angry Clarence Thomas. A troubling many just give up and become the Baby Boy that too many black mothers, sisters and lovers spend their lives propping up and excusing. Some say screw it and go all Bigger Thomas, doing their best to pantomime the monster that haunts America’s twisted fantasies. I’m more of a Langston Hughes than Richard Wright guy myself, but after hearing the cops’ leaked bile yesterday I found myself re-reading “Native Son,” and relating.
Trayvon Martin was just 17, and maybe he hadn’t yet put together his own strategy for dealing with life as the object of America’s nightmares. So when he found himself being stalked down a dark street, having just been suspended for a crime that his middle class white peers laugh about, perhaps he improvised. He doubled back on white supremacy and tried to catch it off guard with a mixture of Nat Turner and N.W.A. You got a problem? Well, now you do. That got him killed. But you know what Trayvon? I feel you. At least you came at the problem head on.
If Zimmerman and the cops are to be believed, Martin did what so many of us know we can’t. Like when someone asks if it’s safe in your neighborhood, and you want to reply, sure, expect for the white women we keep as sex slaves. Or when the school counselor says your kid has an anger problem and special needs. Or when the cop tells you to quit loitering on your own damn block. You got a problem? Well, now you do.
That was Trayvon Martin’s approach. Hey, he was just a kid. He hadn’t learned the subtle art of disarming the racism that can come flying at you when you’re walking home from the store. The fact that the racism in this instance came flying from a Latino man isn’t relevant. Martin’s killer could’ve been black and it wouldn’t change the circumstances. All of us live in a country in which black men are defined as pariahs. All of us consume that message in ways both overt and implicit and, on some level, far too many of us use it to excuse the brutality we can see all around us.
Like I said, Trayvon Martin was marked for death already, statistically at least. As a black infant, he was more than twice as likely to die as his white peers. In his teens, he was at least one and a half times as likely to meet an early death as his white peers. Homicide is the leading cause of death for black men his age, and comes at a rate many times every other racial or ethnic group. If he had reached his 20s, he had a 1 in 8 chance of going to prison, because that empty bag of marijuana he had at school would have meant something very different for him than it does for the middle class white kids who use drugs at higher rates. He’d have gone on to live in a country in which nearly 4 in 10 black children live in poverty, in which 1 in 4 black households lack food security.
The fact is the U.S. often seems like it’s built to kill black people. This is not to say racism is equally lethal today as it was even a single generation ago. But it is to say that the same set of deeply ingrained ideas about what black people have coming to us justified the brutality of yesterday and today alike. And one particular manifestation of those ideas routinely leads to the early death of men like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell and Oscar Grant and Trayvon Martin.
Of course, this violent manifestation of white supremacy is not visited upon black male bodies alone. Indeed, as Tea Party candidates like Nevada’s Sharron Angle reminded us in the past election cycle, we must very much begin to see Latinos in the same way—lurking, dangerous, illegal. Fear and loathe them. If you encounter them on a dark street be ready to go to arms. And so Latino men have a lengthening gruesome roll call, too.
Surely all these people have done something to bring the murder, the poverty, the brutality down upon themselves! That’s America’s unique twist on systemic oppression. We cage people, then call them animals. We starve people, then jibe them for being malnourished. We write laws that allow people to gun down unarmed children and then make the child the aggressor. And so now Trayvon Martin will be all manner of sinner—a pothead, a dropout, a ne’er-do-well with a temper problem who had it coming. But what he will indisputably be is dead, like too many before him and surely many after him. He had it coming, as a black man in America.
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Between the Lines: Shooting first, young Black men in hoodies and the new Negrophobia Dangerous apparel
Writer Anthony Asadullah Samad dons a hoodie, even though it may have been the reason Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Florida.
Posted: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 7:35 pm
Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera set off a national firestorm when he suggested that the hooded sweatshirt worn by Trayvon Martin was what cost him his life. What Rivera is saying, in an offbeat way, is that Martin was profiled by the clothes he was wearing — which is not such an outrageous assertion, given that it applies to Black and Latino youth more than White youth. White youth in hip-hop gear — baggy or sagging pants, “wifebeater” T-shirts and hoodies — aren’t considered “suspicious.” Don’t think for a minute that Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman, missed that Martin was African-American.
It was Trayvon’s skin color that made him Zimmerman’s mark, but Rivera’s assertion raises some points that are not being discussed in the midst of the outrage and grief. Zimmerman hasn’t been charged, because he asserted his right of self-defense in a state with a “shoot first” law. These laws — called the “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida — allow citizens to apply for concealed weapon permits and use deadly force if they have reasonable suspicion that they are about to be assaulted, robbed or harmed in any way. This will be Zimmerman’s defense — whenever he is charged (and he will be charged) — that he acted within the law. The problem is, Zimmerman also found a loophole in to act out his racism, or fear of Black people. Martin’s clothing, the hoodie, exacerbated that fear.
The hoodie made Martin a suspicious Black male in the neighborhood, and Zimmerman knew if he confronted Trayvon, he’d have the “Shoot First” law on his side, making his Negrophobia a twisted way of justifying homicide.
Time will tell if that rationalization holds up. But now, “shoot first” laws needs to be put on trial, because we now see how racists can exploit the law. Florida Gov. Rick Scott has appointed a special task force to look into the case, but Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos has said there will be no special committee appointed to review the Stand Your Ground law. That’s a problem, but we can’t lose sight of why this happened in the first place.
We first have to acknowledge that Negrophobia has returned to America, ushered in by the election of President Obama. The week after he was elected in November 2008, the FBI reported a 49 percent jump in background checks for gun and assault rifle purchases. Some 374,000 people sought to buy guns between Nov. 3-9. It wasn’t that “Fear of a Black Planet” predicted by Public Enemy, but there was clearly some high anxiety of this Black president and Negrophobia had re-evidenced itself.
Negrophobia is a 19th century construct that came about as a result of Blacks seeking equality in public spaces during Reconstruction. That became a problem. The national referendum of the presidential election of 1876 was which candidate — Repuiblican Rutherford B. Hayes or Democrat Samuel J. Tilden — was going to address “the Negro Problem.” Black people in White people’s social spaces would a suspicious occurrence from then on. The Redemption Period (1877-1896) was an entrenched effort to put Blacks back in their social “place” and strip all rights gained during Reconstruction. The Plessy decision of 1896 legalized separation for another 68 years, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964. America has always “shot first” when it perceived that Black people were “out of place.” But in 2012, we thought we were past that — until another “isolated incident” occurs.
You have those in this country that will never get over race. Race is part of the cultural fabric, as is Negrophobia. You can always tell a Negrophobe. They get anxious at the very presence of Black people. Even just one. Persons staring at Black people for no reason. Negrophobes. Won’t service Black people in restaurants and department stores. Negrophobe. Negrophobes never know exactly what to say to Black people. Somebody comes up to you and say something stupid, we used to pass it off as ignorance. Today? Mostly likely, Negrophobe. And Negrophobes are more likely to overact in a racial encounter. Whites, while still a significant segment of the Negrophobes in this nation, are not the only ones. Asians and Latinos have their share also, as do with origins in the Middle East.
Those who come to America also pick up dominant cultural norms — and Negrophobia is one of them. This time around, America got it bad.
Negrophobia has been studied over the past century or so, usually in the context of social construction and the law. When de jure segregation ended in the last quarter of the 20th century, new forms of racism morphed to give support to the nation’s ever-present Black paranoia. One form was called “reasonable racism.” USC law professor, Jody Armour, wrote about it 15 years ago in a book called “Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism” (New York University Press, 1997). The synopsis of the theory around reasonable racism was that since overt racism had become impolitic and so undetectable, covert forms replaced them. Racism didn’t go away. White racists just became “reasonable” in their engagement. One of the aspects that Armour called out was the use of deadly force against Blacks, and the rationale that Negrophobes were using, was that they could shoot somebody, in anticipation of what they thought might occur based on what they thought a Black person might do to them. Of course, this was partly in response to the hyper-radicalized lexicon of pro-Black Radicalism and the “Kill Whitey” rhetoric coming out of the 1960s and 1970s. However, anticipatory reaction was being vetted as public policy (and a legal defense) then. It’s a cultural reality, and a legal quandary, now. Now this law is about to be tested and the eyes of the world are once again on Florida.
In the 21st century, “Shoot First” (and ask questions later) laws were precipitous reaches into citizen protection advocacy whereby the citizen could, in essence, take the law into his or her own hands. Florida passed its law in 2005. Signed into law by then-Gov. Jeb Bush, Florida was the first state to expand the law to use deadly force for self defense outside of a person’s home. Here’s the kicker: under the Florida law, once self-defense is invoked, it is the burden of the state to disprove the claim, which is difficult to do if the alleged assailant in question is dead.
Twenty-three other states have passed “shoot first” laws since 2005. So what happens when the reasonable racist encounters a law that allows them to defend themselves against “suspicious” characters that they anticipate could cause them harm? Exactly. This is the complexity of the Trayvon Martin case and the county prosecutor and the state attorney general are trying to stay out of the way of it. All Zimmerman had to claim is that he was assaulted, and he feared for his life — an evolution of what law enforcement has perfected over the past decade — so he protected himself by killing Trayvon. The same could happen to any of our sons, damn near anywhere in America. Just in some places, it’s been legalized.
Though we understand quite clearly what this is, reasonable racism has new legal cover. Now let’s get at the clothing claim. On a very lightweight level, Geraldo is right. We have often warned our youth about wearing clothing that may identify them as gang members and thus, open to harassment by police or targeted by other gang members. But to suggest that his clothing got him killed because some White man saw him as “suspicious” is a reach. Trayvon’s clothing didn’t get him killed. His skin color got him killed, as it has for countless numbers of Black men over the centuries. The apparel argument is a red herring argument, and here’s why:
Over the past 50 years, Black men have been identified as “suspicious” by their clothing, whether they were or not. And most of the time, they weren’t. In the 1960s, wearing leather jackets made you suspicious and dangerous. In the 1970s, wearing army jackets (as many of the returning Vietnam vets did, along with many school kids; hell, I had one), made Black men suspicious and dangerous. In the 1980s, it was the peacoat. In the 1990s, it was the Raiders jackets. In the 2000s, it was the Georgetown jackets. In the 2010s, it is the hoodie.
The problem was the intersection of a criminal element, as popular wear became “gang wear” after the 1980s, stigmatizing all Black males — so every kid wearing what was cool or popular was linked to criminality on a societal scale, which we now call racial profiling.
We tell the young men to pull their pants up, or tuck their shirts in, because we know it makes them targets for the police and the criminal element. But they don’t — because it’s popular. It’s their swag. Their clothing is their style and their stamp on the culture — and everybody dresses like them in today’s society. Even White youth. But we know it’s really not about the clothing. The clothing changes, but the target remains the same — Black males. Their clothing becomes an identifier — for who you should stop, or who you should shoot at, on a premise that they were gang members or some other kind of social menace.
This is what Geraldo was talking about, but the reality is that it happens to Black men regardless of what they wear, with greater frequency. Why? Because Black males are born suspicious, and whatever they wear cues society of their presence in public spaces. The hoodie is Zimmerman’s alibi based on a stigma associated with it. But all of our kids wear them.
Wearing popular apparel doesn’t make Black males criminal. It just makes them identifiable. Or does it? Not when you’re a White male. Zimmerman didn’t see a hoodie first. He saw a Black male first. And something tells me that Zimmerman might have known that he had some law on his side, which is why he pursued Martin. Without a confrontation and a struggle, there is no defense for murder. That’s why he went after him.
The hoodie debate is symbolic for one reason and one reason only: it’s the latest example of how Black males are profiled and used by some reasonable racists as the latest excuse to commit murder. Despite Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, George Zimmerman needs to be charged and the Florida prosecutor needs to put the law, as well as the suspect, on trial.
Justice for Trayvon. The world is watching.
Anthony Asadullah Samad, Ph.D., is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum (www.urbanissuesforum.com) and author of the upcoming book, REAL EYEZ: Race, Reality and Politics in 21st Century Popular Culture. He can be reached at www.AnthonySamad.com or on Twitter at @dranthonysamad.
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