The initial reaction by many white Mississippians, though certainly not all Mississippians, to the horrific actions of Milam and Bryant was negative. Politicians, journalists, and lay citizens were quick to condemn the actions of the two men. At the end of it all, an all-white, all-male and largely poor jury acquitted both Milam and Bryant of the charges against them.
And the sooner everybody in this country realizes it, the better. If any more pressure is put on us,. The defense of Milam and Bryant and, more so, the protection of the material and psychic value of whiteness, did not end there. White Mississippians would even work to protect Milam and Bryant from punishment for the crime that they readily admitted to engaging in: kidnapping.
Army for the rape of two women and the murder of another in Italy. The grand jury in Leflore County predictably obliged, understanding the meaning of the information and the significance of the whiteness that they had essentially sworn to defend. Further proof that white Mississippians were motivated more by their desire to preserve the property value of whiteness than any desire to protect Milam and Bryant as individuals was the manner in which white Mississippians deserted Milam and Bryant when they were no longer at risk of any further charges.
Once white Mississippians were no longer worried that a conviction of Milam and Bryant could function as an indictment against their racially segregated way of life, they left the two men to suffer on their own.
Additionally, Milam, who, prior to the murder, had employed Blacks to operate his mechanical cotton picking machines, could not find any Blacks who were willing to work for him after the Till murder and confession, so he was compelled to hire white men, whom he had to pay higher wages. Not too long thereafter, Sheriff E. Williams of Sunflower County prohibited Milam from carrying any gun—in this case, the same.
So Milam is confused. He understands why the Negroes have turned on him, but he feels that the whites still approve what he did.
My wife and kids are having it hard. For instance, just like in the Till case, pervasive stereotypes of black males as inherently dangerous, criminally suspect, and disruptive to the social order heavily influenced the actions of the killer and the jury in the Martin case.
This Part of the Article explicates the role that both the material and psychic value of whiteness played in the death of Martin. It also examines the role that commonsense racism played in leading Zimmerman to follow and ultimately shoot Martin as Martin was returning to the home where he was a guest in the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood in Sanford, Florida.
A begins by explaining the different ways in which practices of racism have shifted over time. B then turns to the tragic killing of Martin itself, offering a description of both the undisputed and disputed facts from that night. The persistent value placed on whiteness as property, however, does not mean that its preservation works in exactly the same way as it did in As Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati have explicated, in the post-Civil Rights era where the State no longer explicitly and openly endorses and encourages racial subordination, discrimination, and violence against people of color like it did during the pre-Civil Rights era , most white individuals express a belief in racial equality; they know that they cannot and should not expressly exclude or otherwise discriminate against people of color because of their race.
In contemporary society, because the Civil Rights Movement resulted in the enactment of laws that no longer allow explicit exclusion of people of color in arenas such as education, work, and housing, spatial segregation has taken on a more prominent role than it did during the pre-Civil Rights era when Till was murdered. She was completely mortified at his refusal to help.
However, since the late s and s when courts began to enforce desegregation orders in schools, Whites have become increasingly concerned with ensuring spatial segregation from people of color, particularly Blacks.
Most whites are not drawn to a place explicitly because it teems with other white people. Americans associate homogenous white neighborhood with higher property values, friendliness, orderliness, hospitability, cleanliness, safety, and comfort. Race is often used as proxy for those neighborhood traits.
And, if a neighborhood is known to have those traits, many whites presume—without giving it a thought—that the neighborhood will be majority white. Speaking of how Whites approach unknown Blacks in their area, he writes:.
In the absence of routine social contact between blacks and whites, stereotypes can rule perceptions, creating a situation that estranges blacks. In these circumstances, almost any unknown black person can experience social distance, especially a young black male—not because of his merit as a person but because of the color of his skin and what black skin has come to mean as others in the white space associate it with the iconic ghetto.
In other words, whites and others often stigmatize anonymous black persons by associating them with the putative danger, crime, and poverty of the iconic ghetto, typically leaving blacks with much to prove before being able to establish trusting relations with them. Additionally, much like Milam, Bryant, and other white Mississippians reacted to the threat that Brown represented to them in and , Anderson explains how many Whites respond to the presence of Blacks in what they perceive as white spaces as a threat to their status and security.
Anderson asserts:. For many of them, blacks in the white space may be viewed as a spectacle of black advancement at the expense of whites. Black presence thus becomes a profound and threatening racial symbol that for many whites can personify their own travail, their own insecurity, and their own sense of inequality.
B details key disputed and undisputed facts of the Martin case, and Part II. C explains how the desire to police and maintain the boundaries of whiteness resulted in the killing of Martin. Like Till, Trayvon Martin, who had just turned 17 years old before he was killed, found himself visiting family in a strange new town in February of Just as Mississippi and its culture were foreign to the Illinois-born-and-bred Till, Sanford must have felt completely different to Martin, a Miami resident.
Sanford was not just a few hundred miles away from the popular city; it was vastly different in culture. With more than 2. One of the reactions is to emigrate toward the 19075orth.
They resent the fact that an American has to learn Spanish in order to have advantages to work. It is very, very different. In contrast to Miami, Sanford has a smaller population, with approximately 58, residents. Although both Sanford and Miami have horrible histories regarding racial profiling and shootings of black men by the local police, Sanford possesses its own special place in racial history.
By the time that Martin was killed by Zimmerman in , Sanford was a town rife with racial tensions. Recent events had already eroded the trust between black residents and the Sanford Police Department. The first investigation involved two white security guards, Patrick Swofford and Bryan Ansley, who shot and killed an unarmed, black, year-old male, Tavares McGill.
Smith, a black man, replaced Lee as Police Chief with the express goal of rebuilding trust in the community. Great skepticism, however, remained. At approximately p. Upon spotting Martin in the rain, Zimmerman made a call to report Martin as a suspicious person.
The exchange between Zimmerman and the operator proceeded in relevant part as follows:. Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic? Zimmerman: He looks black. Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing? Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. Dispatcher: OK. Or ? Dispatcher: How old would you say he looks?
Dispatcher: Late teens, ok. Zimmerman: Somethings wrong with him. Dispatcher: Just let me know if he does anything ok Zimmerman: How long until you get an officer over here? Zimmerman: Okay. These assholes they always get away. At this point during the four-minute phone call, Zimmerman told the operator that Martin began to run.
Which way is he running? Zimmerman: Down towards the other entrance to the neighborhood. Zimmerman: The back entrance. Get off! Only Martin and Zimmerman know what transpired after that point, but one undisputed fact is that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, who was an unarmed guest of a resident in that same gated community. Although Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Sanford Police released Zimmerman because he asserted a claim of self-defense and they claimed they found no evidence that night to contradict his claims.
Drew Pinsky, an expert on addiction, explicated that marijuana typically does not make its users more aggressive, but rather more passive. Despite his involvement in a potential crime, Zimmerman, unlike Martin, was not tested for drugs. The night before, his wife Shellie had left him following a big fight. For many Blacks, the decision by the local police to release George Zimmerman, even though he had just killed an unarmed teenager, demonstrated how black lives were devalued in the area.
Zimmerman was allowed to just go on his way while Mr. Martin went to a morgue. They have ignited a powder keg by being slow, by being indecisive and by being arrogant by not arresting this man. What defendant has ever been given such a free ride at a murder trial? In the end, the all-female and nearly all-white jury acquitted Zimmerman of both second-degree murder and manslaughter. Much like Till when he came to visit his relatives in Money, Mississippi in , Martin entered Sanford without any real knowledge of the racially tense environment that he was entering.
A soft-spoken teenager, Martin was known for being kind and gentle towards others. What Martin did not know is that he was walking in a neighborhood where residents, much like white Mississippians in , were fighting to preserve the whiteness of their neighborhood, or rather the meaning accorded to perceived white spaces that their neighborhood had previously claimed. As numerous studies have revealed over the years, Whites are the most racially segregated group in the United States, and that reality is not by pure mistake or coincidence.
More importantly, researchers have found that Whites are the most segregated racial group in the country because they prefer to have only a few neighbors of color. Hacker writes:. Americans have extraordinarily sensitive antennae for the colorations of neighborhoods. In virtually every metropolitan area, white householders can rank each enclave by the racial makeup of the residents. Given this knowledge, where a family lives becomes an index of its social standing.
While this is largely an economic matter, proximity to blacks compounds this assessment. For a white family to be seen as living in a mixed—or changing—neighborhood can be construed as a symptom of surrender, indeed as evidence that they are on a downward spiral.
Thus, as more people of color have moved into neighborhoods that were previously viewed and experienced by Whites as white spaces, Whites who have the means to move have departed from those areas. During the summer of , George Zimmerman and his then-wife Shellie moved into the neighborhood, renting one of the townhomes. As soon as Zimmerman moved into his rental at the Retreat at Twin Lakes, he began making calls to the police about concerns in the neighborhood.
Soon, however, the downturn in the economy, specifically the housing market crash, resulted in a change in the ratio of owners to renters at the Retreat at Twin Lakes.
In fact, by February of , when Martin came to Sanford to visit his father, 40 townhomes within the Retreat at Twin Lakes—nearly one quarter of all the townhomes in the neighborhood—were empty, and more than half the residents in the gated subdivision were renters like the Zimmermans and Green.
In , residents of the neighborhood began to report an increasing number of burglaries to the police. Zimmerman believes subject is involved in recent burglaries in the neighborhood. Days later, on August 6, , Zimmerman reported more black individuals whom he had deemed suspicious. Finally, on September 22, , at the initiation of Zimmerman, residents of the Retreat at Twin Lakes held a meeting to form a neighborhood watch program.
By February of when Martin arrived in Sanford, residents like Bertalan and Zimmerman had become very fearful of what may happen to their property and neighborhood. There was definitely a sense of fear in the neighborhood after all of this started happening, and it just kept on happening. It was every week. Our next-door neighbor actually said if someone came into his yard he would shoot him. If someone came into his house he would shoot him. Everyone felt afraid and scared. Just a few days before Zimmerman killed Martin, Bertalan and her family moved from the neighborhood.
There were black boys robbing houses in this neighborhood. It was not simply that Zimmerman and other neighborhood watch participants linked blackness with criminality, but that they viewed Blacks who were in the spaces that they viewed as white—here, their neighborhood—as criminals, as outsiders who were up to no good.
Williams: Frank what made him look suspicious—what made him look suspicious in your mind, just because he was walking through your yard? Taaffe: Because he was out of place.
He was out of place. Essentially, only seven percent of the reported wrongdoings in the neighborhood were confirmed to involve black males; yet, the entire narrative of fear in the neighborhood centered on black males. For Till, stepping out of place involved talking to a white woman and then daring to whistle while in her presence.
For instance, residents like Tito Ortiz were not part of the fearful crowd that started the neighborhood watch program. One day, Ransburg, a resident of the Retreat at Twin Lakes, was hanging out with a black friend who also lived in the neighborhood. A black guy did that. Indeed, the racial meaning of the Retreat at Twin Lakes was also seemingly adopted by the police officers who arrived on the scene to investigate the killing of Martin. Viewing Martin much like Zimmerman did before and after he followed the boy—as an outsider, not a guest or resident in the neighborhood—the officers did not knock on any doors in the neighborhood to see if Martin might be living in or visiting someone in the gated community.
Moreover, as scholars such as Kenji Yoshino, Devon Carbado, Mitu Gulati, Mario Barnes, and myself have detailed, both racial exclusion and understandings of race have shifted over time. Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America , the notion of racial acceptability has changed in meaningful ways over time. Finally, the fact that Zimmerman is Latino and even has some Afro-Latino heritage does not negate the argument that he was working to preserve the whiteness of the neighborhood.
It is clear that Zimmerman perceived the threat to his community as situated in the presence of young black males in the neighborhood. Indeed, he perceived even black children—not yet out of elementary school—as a sufficient threat to invoke the emergency reporting system. Furthermore, the claim that Zimmerman could not have racially profiled Martin because Zimmerman was part-Latino is premised upon the erroneous assumption that people of color cannot discriminate against each other.
In conclusion, for many African Americans, the killing of Trayvon Martin was the first in many recent signals to expose how the United States is far from being a post-racial society. Such connections between these two cases reveal that while U. Journalism Rev. Teresa M. See, e. Marshall L. See generally Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching exploring how the protection of white womanhood was utilized as a justification for lynching and how lynching informed and shaped the politics and voices of black and white women ; Ashraf H.
Rushdy, American Lynching examining the horror of lynching and its changes in form and meaning over time. Federal Bureau of Investigation Report from See Fed. See Wil Haygood et al. Post Mar. Times Aug. During the fall of , Oscar-nominated film director Ava DuVernay also spoke of similarities between the two cases, particularly their roles in galvanizing major civil rights movements in the nation. Daily News Aug. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 15—18; cf. Stephen J. Employment Discrimination Law , 6 Ala.
Times Mar. Interviews revealed that Oliver actually knew very little about Zimmerman, which began to make people question why he was so persistent in giving television interviews to defend Zimmerman. Bell, Jr. Du Bois, supra note 30, at —10, ; see also David R. See id.
Harris, Whiteness as Property , Harv. Ferguson, U. Harris also notes that, although Brown v. Board of Education overruled Plessy , in refusing to acknowledge a right to equality of resources, the Court failed to guarantee that white privilege would be dismantled, thus perpetuating a property interest in whiteness.
See Harris, supra note 43, at — Crenshaw, supra note 28 , at ; see also Ian F. The current consensus among whites seems to be that contemporary racial inequalities flow from nonracist factors, whether private choices aggregated by the market, cultural predilections, or real racial differences that form inescapable facts of life. In many ways, this ideology of whiteness, coupled with the psychic value of whiteness, can help to explain the outcome in the presidential election in the United States, in which many poor and working-class Whites voted against their economic interest to cast their lot with Donald Trump—a billionaire who once proclaimed that he did not believe the minimum wage should be raised because wages were already too high—rather than form a voting coalition with people of color whose economic concerns and issues more closely mirrored their own obstacles.
Insider: Nordic Nov. Times Nov. Let the world see what I saw. Sun, Sept. Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at —76 direct examination of Carolyn Bryant.
Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 40—41; see also Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at —71 direct examination of Carolyn Bryant. Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at 40—41; see also Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at — Bureau of Investigation, supra note 9, at At trial, Preacher Wright indicated that he had spoken to Till briefly about a rumor he heard, but it is clear that Wright had not heard the full rumor. Appendix A-Transcript, supra note 72, at 36 cross examination of Moses Wright.
Criticism , Whitfield, supra note 19, at Till-Mobley wrote:. Rayner did some work to prepare Emmett for the public viewing, despite our talk. That tongue [that was protruding out and keeping his mouth from closing] had been removed, I guess, and put somewhere. The mouth was closed now. The eye that had been dangling, that was removed, too, and the eyelid closed, like on the other side, where no eye was left.
You would have to have seen Emmett when I first saw him to really appreciate what Mr. What I had seen was so much worse than what other people would ever see. Daily Trib. Only Blacks were searched as they entered the courtroom. No Whites, unless they were strangers, were searched. Sentinel, Oct. Black children and adults were rated as significantly less innocent than White children and adults. President Obama wants to talk about gun control.
Civil-rights leaders want to talk about racial profiling. Others want to discuss how the American criminal justice system supposedly targets black men. All of which is fine. Just don't expect these conversations to be especially illuminating or honest. Liberals in general, and the black left in particular, like the idea of talking about racial problems, but in practice they typically ignore the most relevant aspects of any such discussion.
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Justice makes no concession to such a whiplash notion of self-defense. But Florida law and this case's racial subplot did. Forget that Zimmerman wrongly profiled Martin as a boy up to no good as Martin made his way toward the house in which he was staying. Forget that Martin was armed with only a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea , while Zimmerman was packing a 9-mm handgun with a bullet in the chamber and seven in the clip.
Forget that Zimmerman got out of his SUV for no good reason and minutes later was in a fistfight with Martin. The judge told the jurors they could set Zimmerman free if they believed he feared for his life when the black youngster he pursued got the better of him. Ironically, in what seems to have been a winning argument, Zimmerman's defense team accused Martin of being responsible for his own death because he didn't retreat when he had the chance.
It was the guy who decided to lie in wait," defense attorney Mark O'Mara said in his closing argument to the jury. Martin had four minutes to run away but didn't do so, O'Mara said.
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