When I was twenty years old, while I was working on a student film, I was in a serious accident that nearly cost me the use of my right arm. Part of the upshot of this accident was that I had unintentionally trespassed on public property that was not well-marked as being off limits.
This was in the days before everyone had a cellphone. The friend I was with had luckily done EMT training and was able to do some preliminary care for me, get information like my blood type, etc, in case I passed out, before trying to flag down a car for help.
When the ambulance came, they were accompanied by a state trooper. The trooper was very kind to me, and assured me that he knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, and that he would testify to that end in court, but unfortunately, since I had technically committed a misdemeanor, I had to be arrested. He was as nice as humanly possible about it, and did the paperwork at the hospital, so that I didn’t have to go to the police station, but when I was twenty years old, I was arrested for accidentally trespassing on public property.
I think about this every single time I hear that George Zimmerman still has not been arrested for murdering a child.
You kill another person, you get arrested. If you’re innocent, or defending yourself, (neither of which I believe about Zimmerman) you prove that in court. That is what court is for. I went to court, I explained to the judge what had happened, the judge kind of laughed at me, asked how my arm was, made me promise not to sue the state, and dismissed the charges.
I unwittingly trespassed on public property, got severely injured, and was arrested.
The guy who sent a non-specific threatening email to the Sanford police chief, Bill Lee, has been arrested.
The guy who murdered an unarmed teenager has not been arrested.
This is hideously wrong.
I’ve been trying to figure out for a while now what to say about this. I’ve been saying a lot about it in person, but not a lot on the internet. Sometimes I don’t want to add more noise to drown out the signal, especially when I see white people co-opting the death of a young boy to further their own messages, and I don’t want to be part of that. I want to listen to what the people who are really being affected by this have to say. But I feel compelled to say something. In some ways I feel like waiting to say something until I could figure out what to say is problematic in itself, because we all need to speak out when horrors are committed. And I feel like a cad when horrible things are happening and I’m posting cute photos of myself going to movies.
Other people have spoken about this a bit, but I’m frustrated and angry when I see other white people pulling the “I am Trayvon Martin” thing, because it’s so dismissive of the real issue, which is that we’re not Trayvon Martin. None of us ever will be. We’re George Zimmerman. Even if we don’t go out and shoot kids for fun, when we allow the images in the media to perpetuate the idea that young black men are violent, when our own speech (I don’t want to talk about the conversation I had to have at lunch today) perpetuates an idea of black Americans as criminals, especially young black American men, we are accessories to murder. We are creating people like George Zimmerman. That’s on us. And it doesn’t matter if we have black friends, or black relatives, or black ancestors– that doesn’t absolve us. In fact, it’s worse when we do, and say nothing, because it’s our loved ones who are suffering and we’re not doing anything to ease that.
In the end, I think that’s why I keep thinking about the time I was arrested. Because I don’t have a right to compare myself to a kid whose life was in danger simply because he dared to buy some Skittles and go for a walk. I can compare myself to the man who took his life. The difference being that the only criminal act I’ve ever committed harmed no one but myself, and of the two of us, I’m the one who’s been arrested. I’m not trying to make this about me– It’s not. I’m using myself as an example because I know the details of the story, and I know what happened. I’m not angry that I was arrested. I get what I did wrong, and that that’s the way it’s supposed to go.I’m angry that apparently murdering a young boy isn’t as serious an offense as walking onto a bridge when the pedestrian walkway is closed, if the boy in question is black.
For those of you who thought this was a lone case of crazy, or who are trying to deal with people who claim that:
22 year old Rekia Boyd died on Thursday after being shot by an off-duty cop.
18 year old Ramarley Graham was murdered by a New York City cop in a “drug bust” (though they had no warrant to enter the home, and I’ve heard conflicting stories about whether there were any drugs present at all) just a couple of weeks before Trayvon Martin.
Love to all of you.
<3
<3 back!
brilliant.
As a white person who is committed to social justice and the eradication of racial prejudice from my thoughts and surroundings, I am offended by the implication that my skin color makes me George Zimmerman. I have never claimed that I have experienced what a black male would experience in my community, but still the author identifies me with the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. How is that fair? What additional steps do I need to take in order to not be George Zimmerman?
Ryan, I’m a white person who is committed to social justice and the eradication of racial prejudice, too. As a group, white people (all of us), have created the environment where something like this is possible.
And I don’t think someone who’s really dedicated to fixing that would ever complain about how they’re the one being treated “unfairly” in a discussion about how to fix it.
Of course there’s a sense in which we are all complicit with the systems that abuse and oppress. That is the inevitable result of living in society, and there is enough guilt to go around for people of all communities to share. People in communities that have benefited from these systems have a moral obligation to speak out against injustice, of course, but genetics and skin color are arbitrary and, yes, unfair ways to assign guilt.
Tea, when you say that “white people (all of us), have created the environment” that led Zimmerman to pull that trigger, who do you mean, specifically? Do you mean participants in what might be called white American culture? Do you mean those whose skin is a lighter than a specific color? Do you mean those in the middle class or above? Are immigrants from other countries included? How about white people in other countries?
If we are going to talk about race in such certain terms, I want to know your definitions. Where does white end and something else begin? Is it a cultural or a biological distinction?
Similarly, by what means is the guilt of which you speak transmitted? Is it transmitted by participation in the culture? By the consuming of media? Or is it spread at birth by those individuals who have a certain percentage of ancestors that lived in Europe? Or is Central Asia included? Because, you see, “white” is a slippery category, just like “black” or “hispanic” or any other ethnic label.
I hope you won’t doubt my dedication to racial equality because I have taken the time to “complain” about this. I took the time to read your post because it seemed interesting, and I had an opinion about what you said. Making sure that I get treated fairly actually isn’t one of my big concerns in life. But when you make a point like this, you should be prepared to defend it and not question the motives of those who challenge you.
Ryan,
I find it really interesting that you claim to be committed to social justice, and yet fail to grasp the basic ideas of racism and white privilege.
Let’s take this apart:
“…genetics and skin color are arbitrary and, yes, unfair ways to assign guilt.”
False. Racism is privilege +power. In this society, the society that created the circumstances surrounding the murder of Trayvon Martin, white people have the power. Out of 44 presidents we have had, one has been non-white. In the 112th congress, the house has 361 white members out of 435, and the Senate has 96 white members out of 100. (source.) White people hold the governmental power, make the laws. By having white people in power to the EXCLUSION of people of color, we are perpetuating a racist society. (For the record, the 2010 census recorded 63.7% f the US population as Non-Hispanic White. 85.4% of our lawmakers are in that category. This is wrong.)
“Tea, when you say that “white people (all of us), have created the environment” that led Zimmerman to pull that trigger, who do you mean, specifically?”
I believe, though I do not speak for Tea, that she is referring to everyone who benefits from white privilege. You ask a bunch of other questions, but I’m not going to define whiteness for you, because it is a fluctuating definition depending on area and culture (as an American Jew, I am white in some places and not in others) but suffice it to say: if you have never experienced being sentenced to a longer jail stay than another person for the same crime (10% longer according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission) you’ve got it. You can read more about the way that whiteness and systemic racism manifest here
“Similarly, by what means is the guilt of which you speak transmitted?”
Can you show me where Tea mentioned guilt? Because the only place I can find that word on this page is in your comment.
“But when you make a point like this, you should be prepared to defend it and not question the motives of those who challenge you.”
Tea has every right to question your motives, which she wasn’t actually doing, if you come at her with the assertion that she is calling you a murderer. Congratulations, you’re not George Zimmerman. I’ll get you a cookie. But what ARE you doing to further the cause of anti-racism, and, as you put it “racial equality”? What causes do you support? What do you write to your lawmakers about? Have you unpacked your privilege? I’d be happy to talk to you about societal ills all day, but that doesn’t get anything to change and your words lead me to believe that you haven’t done a lot of the basic work towards understanding WHY the US is the way it is, and no one can help you until you’ve done that.
Okay, so if I am reading you aright, your complaint is that “we’re not all like that”. As in “Don’t say all white people made this situation because we’re not all like that”. Following that I see a good amount of willful ignorance as to how we’re defining terms which are generally quite well-understood, which is frankly beneath you.
To the first point; this issue and, indeed, racism in general, is not about you. You did not start it and as you make the same protestations as every white person about wanting to erase the systemic inequalities which infect most of western culture with regard to race. Fine.
It’s not your fault, specifically.
But you are a part of the system.
You are, by your own admission, a white person. We can play semantics about your percentage white/non-white and how maybe the group with which you identify has only recently become white (Irish, Italian, Greek, Jewish) according to the ever-shifting standards of what makes you white and all of that nonsense but you’re obviously too intelligent and dedicated to the cause of racial equality even consider bringing up such unimportant and frankly derailing lines of reasoning.
Getting back on topic, though, there is a saying which aptly sums up the effect of white privilege in our society: “the snowflake does not feel responsible for the avalanche it’s a part of. ”
Your bruised feelings about maybe being included as a cause which had an effect you don’t like does not mean that you were not a part of it.
In matters of race, all white people are guilty because we are the ones who benefit from the white-supremacist system. We get the good roles on TV, we get taken more seriously in academic discussions, we can threaten and harass people of colour and call it a “joke” and have people back us up and, yes, we can see someone we identify as one of ours murder a child (you’re too smart to argue age semantics so let’s not go there) and then someone else we identify as one of ours can let the first person go, no matter the thinness of the justification.
That is how it is transmitted.
No one stops by to give you a trophy, no one confers powers to you; you just get to do those things and that is the reward.
Whether or not you do them is immaterial. You could.
Tomorrow, I could write a big, long rant about how right proponents of eugenics are and how we could do the whole of civilization a favour if we just forcibly sterilized all those non-white people and there would be people who would applaud me for it.
I could drop the n-word to a white friend and we could both laugh about it and ask why it’s such a big deal because it’s just a word and CERTAINLY not a microaggression used to remind persons of colour that there was a time within living memory where it was not a crime for me to kill a black person and invite my whole family out for a nice picnic while me and my friends maimed that black person’s corpse.
If I want, I can ignore race altogether and pretend I’m “colourblind” and say that I don’t see race nor its effects in society.
If I want, I can just break it all down to semantics and abstractions and pretend it doesn’t actually affect real people and that it’s just something we should debate for fun because, hey, it’s not like it’s a real thing, right? It’s just words. Just like race is just a social construct, right?
That’s how that guilt is transmitted. You don’t get to get out from under it. You don’t get to disavow it. You got the benefits and guilt-by-association is the price you pay.
Compared to the price paid by people who are not white, guilt-by-association is a fucking steal.
Your “complaint” is making this issue–which is that a child was murdered, and after the murderer confessed to doing it (“self-defense” means “I did it but it’s okay because _______”) and there has been no arrest nor any investigation by the city police and not about whether or not you feel like you should be lumped in with George Zimmerman–about you when it is not about you.
You, personally, do not matter.
What matters is that you, by making it about you, are giving cover other people to make it about themselves or about things (gun rights, how gun-owners will look in the public eye, whether or not we are all Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman, the price of tea in China, was Billy Crystal’s Sammy Davis, Jr impression blackface or not, isn’t Obama a race-baiting socialist, etc.) which are not the issue.
That other agencies are trying to get involved is nice and all, but it doesn’t negate the fact that the local police–the police who are supposed to be protecting the persons of colour in that area–did not act to apprehend or investigate someone who stalked and murdered a person of colour for no apparent reason.
Your dedication to racial equality is laudable (here’s your cookie!) but your egotism does it a disservice.
To speak about race is to talk about a large-scale construct.
Large-scale constructs are not about you.
So, again, this issue is not about you any more than an opinion poll in which people who identify as being in the same general group as you is not about you.
You, me, Tea and every other white person in the United States (some would argue that this applies to every white person countries affected by colonialism from countries which have been led by white people) are part of a system of willful ignorance, justification, rationalization and generally looking the other way which allowed this to happen.
There is no option in this. It is out of your control and it is not about you because you can’t change how people look at you or think about you on an instinctive level.
Trayvon Martin was murdered because of a massive system which conspired to label him and every other black person as a threat and because George Zimmerman thought that threat so large, dangerous and imminent that he followed the source of that perceived threat and murdered Trayvon Martin.
I don’t want to be a part of that, either. Nor, I would imagine, do most people.
But we don’t get to cherry-pick the rewards which being white has heaped upon us from the consequences. We can’t send them back because they aren’t presents from a store. They are there on purpose and because someone thinks we deserve them.
And we bear responsibility for when those things go bad because we have not yet destroyed that system and continue to reap rewards from it.
I think there is an important and fundamental flaw in your logic here. People who have systemic power share society with people who do not have systemic power. However, the systems of that society have been designed and perpetuated by those with power. These systems have been designed to benefit those in power and to sustain their position of power. It is disingenuous and naive to assert, as you do, that everyone in society is equally complicit in creating and sustaining these systems of oppression.
You are in a position of power in society, meaning that you have benefited from the structure of society, which was created by people like you for their benefit. You say that you are “committed to social justice and the eradication of racial prejudice,” which would seem to indicate that you are committed to changing the balance of power in society — changing the structure of society — to one that is more just. Yet you say “there is enough guilt to go around for people of all communities to share,” which seems to suggest that you feel no more responsible for the systems of society — for changing the systems of society — that those without power in society, because their power has been stripped by the very structure of society. It’s hard to read that as anything other than a dismissal of the structural problems that exist in society and hard to reconcile that with your purported commitment to fixing those problems.
No one here is talking about genetics except for you. The issue is that you live in a society in which you are systemically privileged over other people. You benefit from that system. George Zimmerman benefits from that system. Trayvon Martin was murdered by that system. What can you do — what do you do — that Trayvon Martin could not do to change that system to be more fair to people like him, even at the expense of some of the privileges enjoyed by people like you?