In the weeks since Trayvon Martin’s execution, we’ve seen many, many people of color identifying with Trayvon and his parents, speaking up about the pain and danger of living in a country where there’s widespread perception that brown skin is threatening.
Here’s what we haven’t seen: a lot of white people examining their own perceptions about brown skin.
Given that much of the discussion so far has focused on the history and patterns of racism that Trayvon’s death appears to fit into--and that a lot of us white folks have decried those patterns--it’s striking that so many people have come forward to identify with Martin and so few with George Zimmerman. If we aren’t the ones perpetuating racism, who is?
It would be easy here to say that old-school Southern whites, white cops, white gun proponents and Geraldo Rivera fans (not to mention white people who own hoodie companies) are the ones responsible for a toxic environment. Indeed, if we’re to be anti-racist allies, it’s important that we recognize whites’ racist behaviors and that we call them out.
But by presuming that they--including Zimmerman, and the cops who failed to arrest him, and the legislators and NRA/ALEC supporters who championed “Stand Your Ground”-- are some other, evil brand of white people, those of us who say we want a truly equitable society miss the opportunity to look at ourselves and see how our behaviors contribute to a world where few are surprised when an unarmed child is killed on a residential street.
It’s uncomfortable to consider, but it’s not just the other white people whose attitudes and actions draw forward the American legacy of racism.
Personally, I gained a nice sense of self-satisfaction by joining a lot of other people, white and of color, in condemning Zimmerman’s apparent racism and the laws and police behavior that backed him up. After all, I don’t own a gun, I’m generally suspicious of police, I wouldn’t vote for a politician who supported pro-gun or SYG laws. I mean, c’mon, I give money to incredible organizations that fight for equal justice. I prefer a racially diverse Hunger Games! I tweeted about Doug Shipman’s terrific TEDx talk on community and diversity--which I found because I follow black men on Twitter! I’m. A. Good. Person. A good white person, at that.
And yet, as Tim Wise pointed out this past Sunday on Melissa Harris-Perry’s show, the research on hidden bias reveals that we all, regardless of skin color, carry innate biases. Whether we become aware of them is often a matter of privilege. How we choose to act is another question altogether.
So there I was a few evenings ago, in a part of my neighborhood that’s pretty far from the trains and the cute shops, on a block near the BQE that has some well-maintained buildings but also a handful of empty lots and abandoned buildings. I was with a lost dog that some other neighbors had found wandering on its own earlier in the day, and I was asking around, looking for its people. Miraculously, I found the owners--which meant that I was walking home alone at dusk.
I had my phone out to text a neighbor about the dog. It’s a new phone, about two weeks old, flat and flashy. As I leaned on a building to type, a young black man walked by me. I noticed that he was a lot bigger than I am and that he was wearing a hoodie. Here’s what I thought: he could have been Trayvon. And then: oh, there’s been a rash of phone thefts in the neighborhood. And then I put my phone in my pocket until he passed. Two minutes earlier, when a young white woman in a hoodie had passed, I thought: cute shoes! And I continued texting. (NB: Although I’ve read that Fort Greene has had a mini-epidemic of phone thefts, I haven’t read a word describing the thieves.)
A quiz: In a mixed-race, gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood at 6p in the evening, with a bunch of people of all kinds around, who feels safer on the street: the 40-something white woman or the 20-something black man?
Ok, ok, false dichotomy, trick question. Everyone needs to stay aware and stay safe, yadda yadda. Point is, if we’re paying attention to Trayvon’s death, rather than to, say, The Wire, we could reasonably conclude that the young black man was not a phone thief or any kind of predator and that he might have felt threatened by my likely ability to draw sympathy from nearby cops (if he’d noticed me at all, which, honestly, I have no idea--but narcissism being what it is, I’m going to go with his having been aware of me).
It was the smallest of interactions, which means this isn’t a big risk for me to admit, but in it, I could have been the George Zimmerman.
Now I’m wondering: What are the more significant interactions where I overinterpret race, and how else can I behave?
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I’m interested in a good conversation on this topic, and I welcome opinionated comments on this blog. Seeing as the internet tends to draw vile comments on race, however, I should mention that I will edit or delete hateful and phobic comments, personal attacks on me or other commenters, off-topic threads (including assholic comments on this comments policy) and things that strike me as trolling. If you dislike that approach, comment on any of the 80 billion other sites that welcome diversity of obnoxiousness.