Of Matters Very Much Related: Trayvon Martin, “Multiracial” Identity, and the Perils of Being Black, Breathing, and Nearby
We Are Respectable Negroes
2012-03-19
Chauncey DeVega
Scholars have long maintained that race is merely a social construct, not something fixed into our nature, yet this insight hasn’t made it any less of a factor in our lives. If we no longer participate in a society in which the presence of black blood renders a person black, then racial self-identification becomes a matter of individual will.
And where the will is involved, the question of ethics arises. At a moment when prominent, upwardly mobile African-Americans are experimenting with terms like “post-black,” and outwardly mobile ones peel off at the margins and disappear into the multiracial ether, what happens to that core of black people who cannot or do not want to do either?
Trayvon Martin was killed for the crime of being black, young, and “suspicious.” Like many other young black boys and grown men throughout United States history, he was shot dead for the crime of possessing an innocuous object (and likely daring to be insufficiently compliant to someone who imagined that they had the State’s permission to kill people of color without consequence or condemnation).
The facts are still playing themselves out. From all appearances, the police have failed to investigate the incident properly. Trayvon Martin’s family has been denied the reasonable care, respect, and response due to them by the local authorities. Observers and activists have gravitated towards racism as the prime motive for the shooting and murder of a young black boy by a grown man and self-styled mall cop, Charles Bronson, Dirty Harry wannabe vigilante.
Common sense renders a clear judgement here: if a black man shot and killed a white kid for holding a bag of Skittles he would already be under the jail; in this instance, the police are operating from a position where a young African American is presumed “guilty,” and his murderer is assumed innocent.
Yes, race matters in the killing of Trayvon Martin. However, and I will explore this in a later post, it is significant in a manner that is much more pernicious than the simple calculus of whether to shoot a young black boy for some imagined grievance or offense—as opposed to being asked a question, or perhaps sternly talked to. The latter is also problematic: it assumes that black people’s citizenship and humanity are forever questionable, and subject to evaluation, by any person who happens to not be African American…
The sociological imagination draws many connections. To point, Trayvon Martin’s murder is also a surprising (and for many, counter-intuitive) complement to The New York Times’ excellent series of essays on race, interracial marriage, and identity.
As someone who has loved across the colorline, and also believes that there are many ways to create a family, I have always held fast to a simple rule.
In this society, in this moment, and given what we know about how race impacts life chances, if a white person is going to have a child with a person of color (especially one who is African American or “black”), a parent is committing malpractice if they do not give their progeny the spiritual, emotional, philosophical, and personal armor to deal with the realities of white supremacy.
By implication, young black and brown children must be made to understand that they are not “special,” “biracial,” or part of a racial buffer group that is going to be given “special” privileges because one of their parents is white. These “multiracial” children are some of the most vulnerable and tragic when they are finally forced to confront the particular challenges which come with being a young black boy or girl in American society. In post civil rights America, this notion is politically incorrect. Nonetheless, it remains true.
Here, Thomas Chatterton Williams offers a great comment on blackness and the dilemma of “post-black” identity:
Still, as I envision rearing my own kids with my blond-haired, blue-eyed wife, I’m afraid that when my future children — who may very well look white — contemplate themselves in the mirror, this same society, for the first time in its history, will encourage them not to recognize their grandfather’s face. For this fear and many others, science and sociology are powerless to console me — nor can they delineate a clear line in the sand beyond which identifying as black becomes absurd.
Question: what happens for those young people who do not see themselves as “black” or “brown,” yet run into the deadly fists of white racism? Do they have the skill sets necessary to survive such encounters whole of life and limb?…
Read the entire essay here.