Trayvon Martin, Race and Anthropology
July 21, 2013
By Leith Mullings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leith_Mullings
Anthropology News (July 19, 2013)
Those of us who research race, racism and inequality must continue to
name racism without sugarcoating it; to analyze the ways in which
racism is maintained and produced inside and outside of our
discipline. Most important, we need to interrogate the new hidden
forms of structural racism and deconstruct, in the best sense of the
word, the ways in which racism expresses itself in the age of
"post-racial color blindness."
On February 26, 2012, 28-year-old George Zimmerman shot and killed an
unarmed 17-year-old African American teenager who, after buying
Skittles and iced tea at the local 7-Eleven, was on his way home.
Zimmerman claimed he was acting in self-defense, and the Sanford,
Florida police force, after a brief investigation, refused to press
charges. Following several months of demonstrations, Florida Governor
Rick Scott (no fan of anthropology, as you may recall) assigned the
case to State Attorney Angela Corey, who charged Zimmerman with 2nd
degree murder. A year and a half after the killing, on July 13, 2013,
a virtually all-white (and all-female) jury found George Zimmerman not
guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin (see journalist Charles Blow for an
excellent discussion of the systemic racism that brought us to this
moment). Though prosecutors, many journalists and large segments of
the public saw the case as a quintessential example of race profiling
- there is ample evidence, many
believed, that Zimmerman profiled the teenager because he was a young
Black man - during and after the trial both teams of lawyers and the
jurors tripped over themselves proclaiming that neither the murder nor
the subsequent not guilty verdict had anything to do with race. How do
we explain these startlingly different responses as to the role of
race?
As a discipline, anthropology has a special relationship to race -
the concept that figured so strongly in the Trayvon Martin case and,
as I wrote in a 2005 article in the Annual Review of Anthropology, a
conflicted history with respect to race and racism. Anthropology is
the discipline that fostered and nurtured "scientific racism," a world
view that transforms certain perceived differences into genetically
determined inequality and provides a rationale for slavery,
colonialism, segregation, eugenics, and terror. Our discipline also
has a significant tradition of anti-racism that emerged from the
tumult leading to World War II.
Color-Blind/Post-Racial Racism: Denial
In the United States, after more than 200 years of slavery and 100
years of legal segregation, the Black Freedom Struggle culminated in
the Civil Rights Movement and resulted in significant victories.
"Whites-only" signs are gone, antidiscrimination laws have prohibited
overt forms of discrimination, and we have elected a Black president.
However, other means of exclusion support residential and educational
segregation; voting is made increasingly difficult because of
gerrymandering, voter identification requirements, and most recently
the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act. As well, the
criminal justice system remains stunningly unjust - a phenomenon aptly
named "the new Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander.
What has changed is that these inequalities are no longer explained
in terms of the racist structures and practices that produce them;
indeed the existence of racism is denied. We now live in what has been
termed a post-racial age, with new ideologies of racism, such as
"color blindness." As sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva explains, the
essence of the new "color-blind" racism is that "racial inequality is
explained in terms of nonracial dynamics." In other words, flagrant
forms of racism coexist with the denial of racism. It is therefore not
surprising that at the press conference following the announcement of
the verdict, Zimmerman's defense lawyer, Mark O'Mara, not only denied
that the case was about race, but, when asked whether the outcome of
the case might have been different if Zimmerman had been a 17-year-old
African American teenager with a gun who followed and shot a
29-year-old white man walking home in the rain, O'Mara responded that
if Zimmerman had been Black,
"he would never have been charged with the crime." Even Michael
Steele, former chairman of the Republican Party and an African
American man, was moved to ask, "Is he high?" Importantly, the
ideological framework of color blindness not only rationalizes racial
inequality; it also serves to erase and delegitimize antiracist
activities. Hence O'Mara also felt free to attack the Civil Rights
activists who called for the investigation that finally led to the
trial.
Anthropology, Race and Racism
In the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, cultural anthropologists in
particular have understood race to be a social construction - not a
biological given (indeed, this is almost a mantra). Race is
constructed in the sense that racial hierarchies are created at
specific historical moments, frequently linked to labor exploitation,
conquest, nation-building, and racialized definitions of citizenship.
The racial projects that create the hierarchies are historically
contingent, mutable, and at once structural and dynamic. Although the
American Anthropological Association's Race: Are We So Different?
initiative has made a major contribution to addressing the racial
ideologies of the world that anthropologists helped to make, what we
have not always done so well is to demonstrate that though race is
socially constructed, racism is a lethal social reality, constraining
the potential, if not threatening the lives, of millions of people.
Given the major role anthropology played in the earlier elaboration
of race as a "scientific" category, the Trayvon Martin tragedy should
provide an opportunity for reflection on our discipline, our
association, and our scholarship. Anthropologist Karen Brodkin
correctly points out that many anthropologists have become
race-avoidant in their practices, in their workplaces, and in the
association, unfortunately and perhaps unknowingly reinforcing racism
by ignoring or denying it. In 2007, former AAA President Alan Goodman
created a Commission on Race and Racism within Anthropology and the
AAA. The commission's findings about practices in many anthropology
departments were, to say the least, discouraging. Anthropology is one
of the least integrated disciplines. The commission found that sister
organizations, including the American Sociological Association, the
American Psychological Association, and even the American Economics
Association and the American Political Science Ass
ociation had more robust, proactive and aggressive strategies to
retain and attract scholars of color. The AAA Committee on Minority
Issues in Anthropology, initially created in 1993 as an outcome of the
Commission on Minority Issues, is the only association-wide committee
charged with addressing the recruitment and retention of scholars of
color. It has had a troubled history, despite the best efforts of able
chairs and the support of several presidents. In its most recent
iteration, the committee's expanding charge and composition has
evolved in such a way that anti-racism has not always been seen as a
predominant concern. Sadly, this and the failure of other initiatives
are in part due to the association's reluctance, despite good
intentions, to recognize, confront and act on racism.
Diversity has become a threadbare term used throughout the academy
and the workplace to refer to almost any type of variation. Expanding
diversity is admirable but does not in itself address the historical
injustices of racial exclusion. To the extent that it substitutes for
antiracist affirmative action, or underplays the US history of
creating a hierarchy of racialized populations, emphasis on diversity
obscures the systemic character of racism in the United States. All
forms of discrimination are lamentable, but they are not equal nor
even necessarily comparable, and often require different
interventions. To lump the issue of all differences together and to
expect a committee or any other body to address all inequalities is to
guarantee failure, which then serves to support the view that the
problem is intractable. The events of the Martin case underscore the
importance of reestablishing anti-racism as CMIA's primary aim and
working more systematically to address racism i
n our discipline, association, workplace and the academy.
The Task Force on Race and Racism
In November 2012 I appointed a Task Force on Race and Racism,
co-chaired by Karen Brodkin and Raymond Codrington. The Task Force set
itself three modest priorities for the year: (1) to construct a
website that is at least on par with those of our sister disciplines;
(2) to hold a roundtable at AAA meetings to promote a discussion of
recruitment and retention of racialized anthropologists in the
subfields, particularly archaeology and biological anthropology, where
they are woefully underrepresented; and (3) to administer a survey to
the membership that could produce baseline data on both representation
and the racial climate. This third priority is perhaps one of the more
controversial initiatives; some of our members are understandably
offended about being asked about their racial/ethnic identity. Task
force members are well aware that individuals have many identities,
but also know that, as anthropologist Lee Baker put it, there is a
difference between identity and identif
ication. In whatever ways Trayvon Martin may have conceived of his
identity, it was how George Zimmerman identified him, supported by a
structure of racism that led to his death. Those who suggest that
concern about racism is a misplaced concern of the previous generation
would do well to remember that Trayvon Martin was only 17 years old.
Needless to say, the problems of race in our association pale in
comparison to the loss of a young life - but it would be a mistake to
imagine that they are wholly disconnected. Those of us who research
race, racism and inequality must continue to name racism without
sugarcoating it; to analyze the ways in which racism is maintained and
produced inside and outside of our discipline without overtly
targeting its victims; and to use the tools of anthropology to
identify the underlying social relationships and informal workings of
racist projects. Most important, we need to interrogate the new hidden
forms of structural racism and deconstruct, in the best sense of the
word, the ways in which racism expresses itself in the age of
"post-racial color blindness." In this way, we do our best to honor
the memory of those, such as Trayvon Martin, who have paid the
ultimate price for racism.
[Leith Mullings is the president of the American Anthropological Association.]
[Thanks to the author for sending this to Portside.]
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