Imagine for a moment that you, your son or daughter, sister or brother, granddaughter or grandson, ventured to the corner store for some candy and something to drink but never returned? Can you imagine if you left the house and didn’t return to watch the second half of the NBA All-Star game? Can you imagine if you, your child, your loved one, your flesh and blood were presumed to be guilty as he walked home? Thought to be a suspect, a punk, a fucking asshole? Can you imagine if you, your child, your loved one, your flesh and blood was thought to be a criminal, thought to be on drugs, thought to be up to no good just because of how she looked, what clothes she was wearing, and because of the color of her skin? Can you imagine if your child was gunned down right around the corner from your house and the police didn’t notify you right away?
Can you even imagine the police letting the perpetrator go or the news media remaining silent? What would it mean to you if the media sat idly by, that the police show limited concern, and the nation seem unaware or not concerned about the fate of your child? Can you imagine the pain and the hurt not just of losing a child but watching a media, a justice system, and a nation fail to act?
Can you even fathom listening to people put your child, who no longer walks the earth, on trial? Drug tests? Fights? Pictures of his muscles, all to paint him as a “thug” or a “gangsta?” Can you imagine the news media demonizing your child, blaming your child for his own death? Can you imagine the focus turning to your parental choices, your child’s friends, your background?
What if a defense attorney asked you to think about your child being responsible for their own death even though someone else shot them? How would that make you feel? Can you even comprehend someone saying that to you?
Maybe you cannot imagine these things; maybe your whiteness, your privileges, your experiences make this difficult for you to fathom. That is no reason to deny his family justice.
The defendant assumed Trayvon didn’t belong in neighborhood; he assumed Trayvon was up to no good; he assumed Trayvon was a criminal. And race matters in every regard. The question before you is will race matter in our pursuit of justice? Will it matter as you think about Trayvon’s life; his lost future; his parent’s anguish? Look at them, they are in the courtroom; can you imagine?
He had the right to walk to the store; he had a right to walk home; he had the right to defend himself; he had the right to LIFE and the pursuit of happiness; he had the right to go on to college, to live his life, to fulfill his dreams.
His parents should not be here right now; they shouldn’t have shed so many tears, lost so many nights of sleep because another man assumed their son to be a criminal. His parents should have seen their child graduate last year; they should have been able to spend dinners talking; they should be hugging their child right now. George Zimmerman took that all away. Give them solace; give them justice; give us all hope and belief in “equal justice under the law,” because sadly, we cannot give them Trayvon back. We can, however, give them justice. We must demand justice, because every life is worth protecting; every life is worth mourning.
Yes, I want you to think about the evidence, but more I want you feel; I want you to think the pain, feel the injustice, feel the anguish. Yes, the law matters, but decisions must be guided my morality and justice; it must account for the lost life; the pain and suffering. Justice is about the law, right and wrong, our moral sense and values. Henry David Thoreau reminds if this when he said, “Justice is sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant.”
I have a dream that one day youth of color can walk to store without being profiled. I have a dream that one youth of color will not seen as suspect, not seen as criminal, not confronted, and not shot dead just feet from their parents home. I have a dream that justice will be equal; I hope that you will make the right decision and at least fulfill the promise of justice in this case. One step forward; toward moving beyond dreams, hopes, and possibilities, to see justice secured and achieved. #JusticeforTrayvon #Justice
This week at least 30,000 incarcerated men and women restarted their hunger strike to protest the inhumane conditions of California’s prison system. Inside 2/3s of its 33 prisons (yes there are 33), along with all of its out-of-state facilities, prisoners have resumed their hunger strike that began some 2 years ago.
According to Abby Ohlheiser, “While the California prison system has a less than stellar reputation on a handful of issues — many of which trace back to its astonishing overcrowding — the striking prisoners are focusing their message on improving conditions for those locked in solitary confinement.”
This decision is especially powerful because it speaks to their collective concern (a sense of community and demand for justice for those within the community) for the horrific conditions within solidarity confinement. Horrific might be an understatement. Shane Bauer, who spent 7 months in an Iranian prison, documented the unfathomable conditions of California prisons in his recent piece, “Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.” Writing about his own experience in Iran, he concludes that Iran has nothing on California when it comes to abuse, violence, and dehumanizing conditions:
IT’S BEEN SEVEN MONTHS since I’ve been inside a prison cell. Now I’m back, sort of. The experience is eerily like my dreams, where I am a prisoner in another man’s cell. Like the cell I go back to in my sleep, this one is built for solitary confinement. I’m taking intermittent, heaving breaths, like I can’t get enough air. This still happens to me from time to time, especially in tight spaces. At a little over 11 by 7 feet, this cell is smaller than any I’ve ever inhabited. You can’t pace in it.… What I want to tell Acosta is that no part of my experience—not the uncertainty of when I would be free again, not the tortured screams of other prisoners—was worse than the four months I spent in solitary confinement. What would he say if I told him I needed human contact so badly that I woke every morning hoping to be interrogated? Would he believe that I once yearned to be sat down in a padded, soundproof room, blindfolded, and questioned, just so I could talk to somebody?
His experiences are that of all too many in California prisons and elsewhere; in his estimation Pelican Bay and other prisons are worse. It is no wonder that 30,000 people are refusing to eat.
Their demands (see below; they remain virtually the same) are for basic human rights. Yet, two years after this strike began, little has changed. As a result the intransigence of the California Department of Corrections and the societal acceptance of abuse and torture directed at prisoners, the conditions remain abysmal. Broken promises; national acceptance of abuse and torture. So the strike continues.
In a week where Yasiin Bey made visible the horrific practice of forced feeding prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, where it was announced that “Force Feeding At Gitmo Will ‘Synchronize’ With Ramadan,” the ongoing protest in California (ground zero of America’s prison nation) is a sobering reminder of the injustices within and beyond our borders.
What appears below is from a piece in 2011, which sadly demonstrates that in almost two years, despite promises, the conditions facing California prisoners and those in Guantanamo Bay remain just as horrific and just as inhumane.
On July 1, 2011, hundreds of prisoners initiated a hunger strike in California. While the strike began inside of the Special Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison, where human beings are locked away inside of soundproof cells for 22 1/2 hours each and every day, the strike has spread to prisons throughout the state, reaching as many as 6,600 prisoners in 13 locations. Their protest sought to “draw attention to, and to peacefully protest, twenty-five years of torture via [California Department of Correction and Rehabilitation]‘s arbitrary, illegal, and progressively more punitive policies and practices.” More specifically, the strike began as an effort to change the inhumane treatment facing prisoners in California (and elsewhere). Colorlines Magazine succinctly summarizes the demands as follows (the demands remain the same):
“End Group Punishment & Administrative Abuse” would end group punishment as a means to address an individual inmates rule violations.
“Abolish the Debriefing Policy, and Modify Active/Inactive Gang Status Criteria” The practice of “debriefing,” or offering up information about fellow prisoners particularly regarding gang status, is often demanded in return for better food or release from the SHU. Prisoners demand the end to debriefing because it puts the safety of prisoners and their families at risk, because they are then viewed as “snitches.”
“Comply with the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons 2006 Recommendations Regarding an End to Long-Term Solitary Confinement” Prisoners demand a more productive form of confinement in the areas of allowing inmates in SHU and Ad-Seg [Administrative Segregation] the opportunity to engage in meaningful self-help treatment, work, education, religious, and other productive activities. This demand includes access to adequate natural sunlight and health care treatment.
“Provide Adequate and Nutritious Food” Prisoners’ demands include the end to the practice of denying adequate food as a means of punishment, asking for wholesome nutritional meals
“Expand and Provide Constructive Programming and Privileges for Indefinite SHU Status Inmates” demands include a weekly phone call, permission to keep wall calendars and craft items – art paper, colored pens, small pieces of colored pencils, watercolors, chalk, etc.
The courageous stance of these incarcerated individuals, and the widespread support from those outside the prison walls did not lead to fruitful negotiations, with 400 individuals surpassing 20 days without food. According to reports in The Los Angeles Times, 49 people lost more than 10 pounds with one individual having lost almost 30 pounds during the 2011 hunger strike. Dorsey Nunn, an activist who co-founded All of us or None of us, described the situation as dire:
Prisoners in Pelican Bay have not eaten in 18 days. I have been told that the prison hospital is full with prisoners who are being hydrated intravenously because some have started to refuse water. Others are having a problem just keeping their water down at this point. Members of the prisoner negotiation team have lost between 20 and 35 pounds. It is truly a matter of luck and or untiring spirit that nobody has died so far.
The dire circumstances facing these hungers strikers symbolizes the daily mistreatment endured by prisoners throughout the United States. From neglect, abuse and sexual violence, to abysmal living conditions and unimaginable health “care,” prisons are spaces of obscene denied humanity. In California, at Kern Valley State prison, prisoners have long been forced to drink water contaminated with arsenic. In Georgia, prisoners “report . . . harsh conditions and inadequate nutrition and health care. Prisoners were constantly hit with fines ranging from $5 to $20 . . . sometimes for even just ‘looking at a guard.’” In Arizona, those in incarcerated in Sherriff Joe Arpaio’s jails have routinely been served rotten food and denied basic health care. In Louisiana, at Angola State Prison, America’s largest prison, reports have documented abuse, violence, politically motivated punishments, and a culture of accepted torture.
The conditions that have led to hunger strike are commonplace throughout the United States and the acceptance of these human rights violence illustrates the power of race and class in America. Do we really think that abuse, sexual violence, rotten food, denied health care and a culture of torture would be acceptable if directed at the sons and daughters of white suburban America? The reaction to the Pelican Bay Hunger strike provides us with the sad answer [The reaction to the Hunger Strike in 2013, from California to Guantanamo Bay provides us with yet another sad answer].
Yesterday I wrote a piece reflecting on the ways that both the defense and the media had put Trayvon Martin on trial. During subsequent conversations, I further lamented the defense strategies and how a common response has been, “but the defense is suppose to put on a rigorous defense.” I don’t question the right to put on a defense (although most people who face the criminal justice never put on a defense – we are a plea bargain nation – and most certainly don’t have access to experts and America’s best lawyers) but rather that the Zimmerman defense has not only put on Martin on trial but has done so through explicitly racial means. The efforts to paint Trayvon as a violent “thug,” as someone with “violent tendencies,” as a marijuana smoking, gun toting, menace to society moves beyond a rigorous defense. The “Menace to Society” or “Young Black and Don’t give a Fuck” stategy is antithetical to justice. Jelani Cobb describes the tactics as akin to the defense strategy seen within rape trials:
The contours of the defense, like a great deal of the discussion of this case, are shot through with an antiquated brand of rape-think. What was he wearing? Was he high or drunk? Why was he out at night? Beneath these questions is a calcified skepticism toward Martin’s innocence that all but blurts out ‘He was asking for it.
Just as rape culture has allowed for the criminalization and victim blaming in rape trials, white supremacy facilitates this type of defense; it encourages and allows for the prosecution of black victims.
Trayvon Martin is the victim and highlighting the purported victim’s past, playing upon racist stereotypes, and otherwise turning the trial into one about the character of Trayvon Martin moves beyond vigorous defense. His life matters and to make the case into one where he deserve to die because he may have smoked marijuana or gotten into a fight is counter to justice.
The efforts to criminalize Trayvon Martin, to blame the victim, must be understood within the larger context whereupon Trayvon Martin’s right to defend himself has been denied. As Jelani Cobb argues, the mere fact that Trayvon Martin has been consistently represented as someone undeserving of his right to stand his ground or defend himself against in the face of an armed man following him allows for victim blaming:
Amid their frustratingly uneven presentation, Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda and the rest of the prosecution have pegged their second-degree murder charges largely on the idea that Martin was losing the fight on February 26th of last year, that he shouted for help, and that Zimmerman, a vigilante would-be cop, shot and killed him anyway. In plotting their route to conviction, they necessarily bypass another set of questions. What if he wasn’t losing the fight? What if Zimmerman is the one who called for help? What if Martin did swing first? And, most crucially, is an unarmed black teenager ever entitled to stand his ground? . . . . But whatever its legal merits, the prosecution’s approach has left intact the suspicion that Florida’s proactive self-defense laws are color-coded, intended for people in fearsome encounters with blacks, not blacks in fearsome encounters.
This is of course not a statement about the defense but the criminalization of Martin and the seeming impossibility of his right to defend himself, which gives me pause.
Still, others continue to cite the fundamental principal of a vigorous defense as justification for any defense strategy. The question here is justice; the question is fairness; the question is facts versus stereotypes; relevance versus racial appeals. The defense’s deployment of the race card toward the criminalization of the victim warrants challenging inside the courtroom. That hasn’t happened; the challenges outside the courtroom are imperative.
“The problem, to me, is the broader framework of white supremacy that allows certain anti-Trayvon questions/narratives to be viewed as compelling and persuasive to jurors,” notes Marc Lamont Hill. “In other words, I don’t have an issue with questioning Trayvon’s character as such. I have an issue with his race, age, or fashion choice being seen as evidence of criminality. That, however, isn’t a criminal justice problem.”
I do have a problem with it because given the juries are told to just listen to the evidence; given that the Judge disallowed references to racial profiling; given that colorblindness is promoted as the solution to injustice; given that a court of law exists in the broader context, this vigorous defense is not only prejudicial but reliant on stereotypes, bias, and a system of injustice. While Judge Nelson has limited what is admissible (vigorous defense has constraints and rules) the damage has been done in court of public opinion.
Within the court and beyond, the criminalization of Trayvon Martin is not just about Martin but also about blackness. The strategy isn’t simply about Trayvon Martin but putting blackness on trial. It not only shares the same logic and ideology that leads to stop and frisk but furthers the stereotypes of the “criminalblackman.” So efforts to compare this to another defense whereupon a white victim was put on trial doesn’t account for this fundamental issue. Whether the defense in the Jodi Arias trial, O.J. Simpson trial, or countless others employed tactics that questioned the character of victim is irrelevant. These are fundamentally different because in these instances, stereotypes about whiteness were not part of the defense; white masculinity or whiteness was not put on trial. Here lies the core issue: the justice system, as an American institution, is fundamentally antithetical to justice and fairness when it comes to black life. This trial is yet another reminder of this fact, although this won’t be admitted into evidence.
Narratives of white victimhood are the rage these days.
From Abigail Fisher v. the University of Texas to the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, from Paula Deen’s claim of being a victim of the “PC police” to a material witness’s use of the phrase “creepy-ass cracker” in the criminal trial of George Zimmerman—there has been ample effort to imagine white people as the real victims in contemporary America.
David Sirota says, “hysterical white people are all over the media screaming to whomever is listening that white people are under attack.”
Tim Wise notes this is in keeping with history. “The cult of white victimhood has long had its charter members,” he says. “Nowadays the cult has the attention of the media and a white public already anxious about changing demographics, the presence of a black president and economic insecurity.”
I call it WDD—”White Delusional Disorder.”
People suffering from WDD experience intense and wild distortions of and deviations from empirical reality. They believe white people are not benefiting from a racially stratified society. They are, instead, its true victims.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a case weighing the affirmative-action policies of the University of Texas. The court punted by sending the case back to a lower court. But in doing so, it left unaddressed claims of Abigail Fisher’s victimization.
The plaintiff claimed: “There were people in my class with lower grades who weren’t in all the activities I was in, who were being accepted into UT, and the only other difference between us was the color of our skins. I was taught from the time I was a little girl that any kind of discrimination was wrong. And for an institution of higher learning to act this way makes no sense to me. What kind of example does it set for others?”
Yet court documents show that Fisher’s high school grades and SAT scores would not have qualified her for admittance to Texas’s flagship institution in Austin. Even so, she is a victim , she says. Meanwhile, the school admitted five students of color with lower scores as well as 42 white applicants whose scores were equal to or lower than Fisher’s.
Not surprisingly Fisher and her supporters have shown no concern for the 168 students of color who did not receive admission, though their scores were equal to or higher than hers. Nor have they expressed outrage at the number of students denied admittance though they presumably enrolled in costly SAT prep courses. Yet Justice Anthony Kennedy and the court’s conservative bloc failed to account for white privilege.
This was equally evident in the Supreme Court’s gutting of Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act. During oral arguments last spring, Justice Antonin Scalia memorably described the VRA as a “perpetuation of racial entitlement.” Thus the Voting Rights Act victimizes white America. Despite claims of racial progress, and despite fantasies that the VRA is punishment for the sins of white grandfathers (it isn’t), the VRA was about protecting every person’s right to vote.
But this is the logic that governs the cult of white victimhood.
Only in America can inequality, voter suppression, and societal condemnation of racial slurs become a moment to lament white victimhood.
A couple weeks back, Melissa Harris Perry and her guests discussed the power of images, focusing on the debate as to whether or not the public should see images of Newtown violence. While recognizing the pain and difficulty for the Newtown parents, each seemed to conclude the stakes were too high and that the public needed to see the images.
Michael Skolnick called upon Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy to release the pictures. The past reveals that the sight of images has the potential to change the course of history. Amid the gun debate, the sight of young (middle-class white) children brutalized may galvanize change. Skolnick, who later noted, “Newtown changed the conversation because they were white,” highlights the power of the photographs of whiteness.
I think that for Americans, we have to see these images. This is not about politics. This is about lifting the consciousness of our nation. We have to know, yes, these were angels that went to heaven, but this was a brutal, brutal attack on children whose hands were blown off, whose faces were blown off and torsos were blown off. This is not just about glamorizing or sensationalizing what happed in Newtown. This was horror.
Yet, so much of the conversation was about the universal power of seeing evil; that viewing the horrors of gun violence, brutality, or abuse compels outrage and action. In fact, Melissa Harris-Perry started the show by highlighting the power of images to sway public opinion; pictures shape the debate, elicit emotion, and inspire action:
So it’s a tough choice. And when it comes to choosing to show the image, the slain child, it’s a decision no parent should be faced with having to make. But it is a decision that Mamie Till-Mobley did make in the case when her son Emmett Till was killed in 1955. Instead of having a reserved, low-key, private family funeral, Mamie decided to open the casket. To make the funeral a public experience. To show how killers, lynchers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant brutalized and tortured her 14-year-old son to death. Her decision to show the world the battered body and unrecognizable face of her son Emmett served as a spark for the civil rights movement. Till’s example might lead all of us to ask Newtown parents to release those pictures. Be as brave as Mamie Till was.
To illustrate the power of image, Harris Perry and others noted how the sight of Emmett Till, beaten beyond recognition, compelled national attention and outrage, spurring the civil rights movement. In reality, it galvanized and inspired action, among African Americans. However, the sight of Till’s disfigured body didn’t produce systemic change; it didn’t lead to legislation from congress nor did it compel federal intervention. It didn’t lead to white America to look in the mirror or confront racism because it had seen its brutality. Even the acquittal of two men didn’t propel a national movement across communities demanding justice and change. Till’s death and his life, his humanity, wasn’t, to borrow from Mark Anthony Neal, “legible.” Black suffering was and continues to be “illegible” to much of white America.
Instead, Till’s death and the horrifying images impacted Black America. Much of white America continued to accept Southern apartheid. All images are not created equally; the white supremacist gaze clouded the moral, political, and cultural responses.
It is no wonder that as we look at the Till generation, as we look into the historic archives to bear witness to the impact of the lynching of Till had, we see examples of how the lynching of Till galvanized activism from within the black community. Muhammad Ali and Diane Nash, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde and James Baldwin, Anne Moody and members Black Panther Party all spoke of the transformative impact of Till. Harvey Young describes the importance in “A New Fear Known to Me”:Emmett Till’s Influence and the Black Panther Party”
While spectacular murders of black people, both male and female, by white individuals and mobs had occurred for centuries within (and across) the United States, the Till case proved extraordinary thanks to Bradley’s concerted efforts not only to openly display her son’s bloated and misshapen corpse but also her maternal grief for the world to see. Although not recognizable as a person – much less a teenager, the face of Till, captured by a photographer and circulated via print media, promptly became a representation of the severity of racial hatred, prejudice, and violence that continued to exist in the nation. … It asserts that the killing not only encouraged a newfound self-awareness among black youth as “black” and, therefore, as being susceptible to violence, but also provided additional motivation toward the formation of political organizations like the Black Panther Party, which advocated a more aggressive pursuit of social reform than the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Till’s influence on “the Party” appears not only in the recollections of members, who were nearly the same age as Till when he was murdered, but also in the Party’s skillful use of images of injustice to raise civic awareness and mobilize a new movement for social reform, efforts to monitor the police, and establishment of community-based, social service programs which sought to create a hopeful future for new generations of black youth.
Death and its meanings is clouded and constrained by race, class, and nation; bloodshed and violence is narrated through America’s white racial frame.
The differential levels of mourning and outrage afforded to different bodies are visible throughout history. In fact, the civil rights movement used white supremacy and codified white privilege as part of its struggle to bring down the walls of Jim Crow segregation. The Freedom Rides and Freedom Summer relied on violence against white civil rights workers to compel national attention, governmental intervention, and widespread outrage. One organizer noted that, “the death of a white college student would bring on more attention to what was going on than a black college student getting it.” In other words, the reports of the beating, bombing, brutalization, or murder of African Americans didn’t elicit sufficient outrage and action; images of maimed black men and women, and those who lost their lives to white supremacist hands, did not compel mourning or calls to action. The sight of maimed white bodies, of whiteness, marked as innocence, as civility, as citizen, and as the future, provoked a differential emotional, political, and media reaction than did violence directed at black bodies. Writing about a SNCC Poster entitled “For Food . . . For Freedom,” which featured a blond haired white child, Leigh Raiford reflects on the powerful ways that SNCC used the accepted humanity of white bodies in their fight for justice:
The “for food . . . for freedom” poster also suggests SNCC’s increased awareness of the value assigned white bodies over black bodies in the estimation of U.S. liberals, a cognizance that prompted the recruitment of more than eight hundred predominantly white, predominantly northern college students for the massive voter registration efforts of Freedom Summer. James Forman and Bob Moses rightly anticipated the media attention and general sympathy that would come to bear as young white men and women experienced, if only for a few months of 1964, the same vulnerability that beleaguered African Americans in the face of white supremacist violence. The poster speaks to the precarious situation of whites dehumanized by the matrices of race and poverty.
Pictures exist in a social context; the sight of violence and death is always read through socially-produced scripts and gaze. Gun violence is profiled racially. Victims are profiled racially. Perpetrators of violence are profiled racially; communities are profiled racially. The visibility and invisibility of death perpetuates this profiling schema; it reflects the logics of racial profiling as well.
The notion that visibility of violence or death compels national outrage erases the real world context of Trayvon Martin, who has been turned into the perpetrator rather than the victim within some parts of white America (see Fox news). Look at Jordan Davis, Hadiya Pendleton, Chicago and New Orleans. What about Oscar Grant, and so many others who have died at the hands of “law enforcement” #every28hours?
When talking about photographs, we must recognize that every life is not treated equally; every person’s humanity is not seen so much so that every image will elicit action and change. As Rebecca Wanzo argues in The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling, shaming or “sentimentality” is an “insufficient means of political change.” Substantive change, especially when we are talking about the suffering and bodies that aren’t “legible” to white America, requires more than exposure. A photograph that potentially forces white American into a moral crossroad does not guarantee reaction and action toward transformation. Consciousness isn’t a natural outcome of knowledge; it’s not all about the photo. Change results from organizing and agitation. That is the true lesson from history.
Post script
After watching the George Zimmerman trial all week, and listening to a defense team along with the media portray Zimmerman as sympathetic terms; after watching the trial and listening to the demonization of Martin, and the deafening silence as it relates to the case from much of white America, it is clear to be that a picture is sadly not always worth 1000 words. A picture’s worth is very much wrapped up in the scripts of race, gender, class, innocence, criminality,
In 1852, Frederick Douglass offered the following with the “”The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Reading these words today, I am struck by the unfulfilled promises of America’s creed. The sham of a celebration of freedom and liberty in clear as we remember Oscar Grant, Dante Price, Amadou Diallo, Kimani Gray, Rekia Boyd, Travis Henderson, Sean Bell, Kendrac McDade, Ramarley Graham and so many others. The sham has been clear over the last week with the Zimmerman trial and the gutting of the VRA. Knowing that an African American man or woman will likely be shot by the police (#every28hours) during the course of this day, I cannot but think of the ongoing history of injustice and cruelty. Amid the celebrations of freedom is the silence and lack of mourning over lost lives from Chicago to New Orleans. As he speaks of “the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim,” I wonder how 2013 fits given rampant unemployment among communities and the systemic destruction of America’s educational system. I see a militarized border and a state that will allow voter suppression, the denial of a woman’s right to choose and global violence without any regard for the humanity and rights of all people. 4th of July is drones and racial profiling; 4th of July is subprime mortgages and the PIC; 4th of July is race to the bottom and poverty. Douglas reminds us clearly, “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.” In the 161 years since he spoke these words, they remain all too true and all too powerful
Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too Ñ great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory….
…Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.”
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common.ÑThe rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America.is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their mastcrs? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….
…Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. — Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.
The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. ‘Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto Ood.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:
God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.
God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.
God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But to all manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.
Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.
While little surprises me about CNN (Cable’s NON News), the sensational efforts to play off the George Zimmerman trial, to link the “N Word” to Cracker, and to situate the discussion within a discourse of “which is worse” is a testament to their failures as a network. As someone on Twitter and my colleague Rich King noted, the mere fact that CNN says Cracker but encodes the “N-word” tells us all we know, yet the conversation continues.
Despite amazing participants, the framing of the discussion, which centers whiteness (can’t have a discussion of “N word” without somehow bringing the debate back to whiteness), on false comparisons is telling! If CNN wanted to have a discussion to add depth to Zimmerman trial as it relates to Cracker but instead they wandered down the problematic road of “everyone is racist” and “everyone has their own slurs.”
Cracker has a long history; a longer history than America. Dating back at least to Shakespeare, the origins and meaning are disparate. Jelani Cobb, on NPR’s Code Switch, offers insight into its more contemporary usage:
“Cracker,” the old standby of Anglo insults was first noted in the mid 18th century, making it older than the United States itself. It was used to refer to poor whites, particularly those inhabiting the frontier regions of Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. It is suspected that it was a shortened version of “whip-cracker,” since the manual labor they did involved driving livestock with a whip (not to mention the other brutal arenas where those skills were employed.) Over the course of time it came to represent a person of lower caste or criminal disposition, (in some instances, was used in reference to bandits and other lawless folk.).
Despite this very specific history, one that locates cracker within history of white supremacy and one that position itself outside this history, some still try to connect Cracker with “N word” as part of its narrative on “white victimhood” and “double standards. Joan Walsh took up this line of argumentation in a recent post:
From Glenn Beck’s the Blaze to the Breitbots to smaller right-wing shriekers to Twitter trolls everywhere, white grievance-mongers seemed less bothered by the fact that Martin allegedly used the term, than by Jeantel saying it wasn’t a slur…. My God, don’t these people get tired of themselves? So much of the trumped-up racial upset on the right, generally, is about language: If black people can use the N-word, why can’t we? (Even Paula Deen tried to use that as self-defense at first.) Now we’re moving on to: If the N-word is racist and forbidden, words like “cracker” should be, too. But “cracker” has never had the same power to demean, or to exile, or to sting. No social order has ever been devised whereby African-Americans oppress people they deride as “crackers.”
Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker too articulated the absurdity of the comparison:
For those needing a refresher course, here are just a few reasons why cracker doesn’t compare to the N-word. Cracker has never been used routinely to:
Deny a white person a seat at a lunch counter.
Systematically deny whites the right to vote.
Deny a white person a seat near the front of a bus.
Crack the skulls of peaceful white protesters marching for equality.
Blow up a church and kill four little white girls.
Need more? Didn’t think so.
Cracker may be a pejorative in some circles. It may even be used to insult a white person. But it clearly lacks the grievous, historical freight of the other.
The efforts to push back at this attempt to imagine white victimhood, to reduce racism discussions to individual prejudices or slurs, to deny white privilege through noting double standards and the assault on whiteness, is nothing new. It’s central to a post civil rights discourse, which has sought to deny the structural advantages that continue to benefit white America. Tim Wise makes this clear in his piece “Revisiting a Past Essay — Honky Wanna Cracker? Examining the Myth of Reverse Racism:”
Simply put, what separates white racism from any other form and makes anti-black and brown humor more dangerous than its anti-white equivalent is the ability of the former to become lodged in the minds and perceptions of the citizenry. White perceptions are what end up counting in a white-dominated society. If whites say Indians are savages, be they “noble” or vicious, they’ll be seen in that light. If Indians say whites are mayonnaise-eating Amway salespeople, who the hell’s going to care? If anything, whites will simply turn it into a marketing opportunity. When you have the power, you can afford to be self-deprecating.
The day that someone produces a newspaper ad that reads: “Twenty honkies for sale today: good condition, best offer accepted,” or “Cracker to be lynched tonight: whistled at black woman,” then perhaps I’ll see the equivalence of these slurs with the more common type to which we’ve grown accustomed. When white churches start getting burned down by militant blacks who spray paint “Kill the honkies” on the sidewalks outside, then maybe I’ll take seriously these concerns over “reverse racism.”
So to be clear, comparing the “N-Word” to Cracker is like comparing ice cream to cardboard. Yet, both very much pivot on white supremacy. Yes, white supremacy grounds both the N-Word and Cracker. The history and origins of Cracker points to the way it seeks to normalize whiteness as middle-class, civility, and civilization. It, like White Trash (see here for great discussion), seeks to differentiate between those who are southern, those who are lower-classes, and those who don’t embody the desired inscription of whiteness. Cracker seeks to humanize white normativity. Matt Wray (cited here), writing about discourse surrounding white trash, argues:
Current stereotypes of white trash can be traced to a series of studies produced around the turn of the century by the US Eugenics Records Office… wherein the researchers sought to demonstrate scientifically, that large numbers of rural poor whites were “genetic defectives.” Typically, researchers conducted their studies by locating relatives who were either incarcerated or institutionalized and then racing their genealogies back to a “defective” source (often, but not always, a person of mixed blood) (2)
Given this history, Cracker must be understood not as anti-White per se but serving in the maintenance of white supremacy and the white power structure. It establishes a qualifier to those who are “white” who don’t embody the hegemonic vision of whiteness. It not only Others the “white poor,” furthering narratives that demonize and blame the poor across the color line, but humanizes whiteness as a category. The history of Cracker and the word itself is very much one of race, class, and caste, in which WHITES judged, policed, and categorized OTHER WHITES to determine who was truly WHITE and who was not quite WHITE. Rather than recycling the tried and trusted story of white victimization (notice how the debate about “N Word,” Cracker, Affirmative Action, the Voting Rights Act, Paula Deen, etc. always in some way comes back to a delusional sense of white victimhood), we must begin to think about the structural context, one where “whites continue to swim in preference.” Cracker isn’t simply a word or a slur but a window into America’s racial history, into white supremacy.
Dr. David J Leonard 