Journalist Gerald Rivera set off a national
firestorm when he suggested the hoodie that Florida
youth, Trayvon Martin, was wearing cost him his life.
What Rivera was suggesting, in an offbeat way, was that
Martin was profiled by the clothes he was wearing - 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 sweatshirts with hoods on them (hoodies)
aren�t considered �suspicious.� Don�t think for a minute
that Trayvon�s killer, George Zimmerman, missed - for
even a minute - 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 the grief. Zimmerman hasn�t been charged because he
asserted his self-defense right in a state that has a
�shoot first� law. Shoot first laws, in this case - called
the Stand Your Ground Law in Florida - allows citizens
to apply for concealed weapon licenses and to carry those
weapons, where they have the right to use those weapons
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 which 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 defense
of justifiable homicide.
Time will tell if that rationalization
holds up, but now the �Shoot First� law needs to be put
on trial, because we now see the adverse effects of when
a reasonable racist exploits the law. Florida Governor,
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.
It was ushered in by the election of Obama.
The week after President Obama was elected in November
of 2008, the FBI reported a 49% jump in background checks
for gun and assault rifle purchases. Some 374,000 people
sought to buy guns between November 3rd and 9th, 2008.
It wasn�t that �Fear of a black planet� that Public Enemy
had predicted, but there was clearly some high anxiety
of this black President and that 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 one in which candidate, Republican 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 Right Act of 1964 (the Brown decision
outlawed it, but didn�t stop it). 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� occurred.
You have those in this country who will
never get over race. Race is part of the cultural fabric,
and Negrophobia is also. You can always tell a Negrophobe.
They get anxious at the very presence of black people
- even just one. People 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. When somebody came
up to you and said 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 Armenians and Iranians. Those
who come to America,
pick up dominant cultural norms. Negrophobia is one of
them�and this time around, America�s
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: The Hidden Costs of Being Black
in America
(New York University Press, 1997).
The synopsis of the theory around reasonable
racism was that as overt racism had become impolitic and
so undetectable, covert forms replaced it. 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 on Florida, once again.
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 their own hands. Florida
passed its law in 2005. Signed into law by then Florida
Governor, Jeb Bush, Florida was the first
state to expand the law to use deadly force for self defense
- outside a person�s home. Called the Castle Doctrine,
it says a person is entitled to defend themselves against
assault anywhere they go. 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 assaulter in question is dead.
Twenty-three other states have passed �shoot
first� laws since the Florida
law was passed. 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, 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 that
this, 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 fifty 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 Viet Nam vets did - and many school kids - Hell,
I had one), made black men suspicious and dangerous. In
the 1980s, it was P-Coats. In the 1990s, it was Raiders
jackets. In the 2000s, it was Georgetown
jackets. In the 2010s, it is �hoodies.� The problem was
the intersection of a criminal element, as popular wear
became �gang wear� after the 1980s. That stigmatized all
black males - so that every kid who wore what was
cool, in 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 are 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, and 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 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.
BlackCommentator.com
Columnist,
Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad, is a national columnist,
managing director of the
Urban Issues Forum
and author of
Saving The Race: Empowerment
Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Twitter @dranthonysamad. Click
here
to contact Dr. Samad.
