By: Tyler S. Bugg
By now, in large part due to the viral social media that rocketed the news around the world, you’ve heard about Trayvon Martin’s murder. 17-year-old Trayvon was chased and shot by self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” George Zimmerman for wearing a black hoodie, carrying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of Arizona iced tea, and “looking suspicious” as he walked through a gated suburban neighborhood in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman claimed his actions were in “self-defense.” Police accepted his justification and opted out of administering drug, alcohol, or background checks. Zimmerman evaded an arrest, and he remains free from criminal charges or detention.
But if nothing else, he’s caught tight by the pressure of public outrage. Protests, vigils, petition signatures, and calls for justice have taken over media airwaves for days, from people of color and white people alike. The hype Trayvon’s murder has generated has moved his death away from the actual incident and closer to a protest of the marginalization people of color continue to struggle through. And white people, too, have joined the hype; violence for any person, they say, affects us all, and white people should speak out in the same way.
Yet people still claim we live in a “post-racial” society.
It couldn’t be farther from the truth. Following on the heels of the “I am Troy Davis” movement, the “I am Trayvon Martin” rhetoric has caught on, and like in the case of Stephen Lawrence, has quickly become the mantra that symbolizes the oppressed experiences of all people of color. The now viral mantra– “I am Trayvon Martin; you are Trayvon Martin”– is even one white people are chanting alongside (or, more accurately, over) people of color.
But not me.
I am a white man, and I benefit from it. I live a social life of (white) privilege.
I empathize with Trayvon and his family. I voice intense and critical concern for the racial violence that perpetuated his murder. But I am not Trayvon Martin.
And I won’t wear a button that attempts to (mis)identify me as such. As an individual only benefitting from long-entrenched systems of white privilege, and in the most care for Trayvon’s family, I will not don a button that implies I can somehow sympathetically relate to, connect with, or even approach understanding Trayvon’s experience. I have the privilege of having no idea of what his experience was like, and I have the privilege of knowing that I never will.
I don’t– and will never– look suspicious, and that’s the problem. I’m not going to dilute the efficacy of the movement by pretending that I do. I’m not going to wear a black hoodie or buy Skittles and iced tea to “stand in solidarity” with anyone who thinks doing so makes him or her an activist. (Does anyone remember the “slacktivism” of the much-criticized Kony 2012 movement?) I’m not going to disempower what the movement should be about.
First, what it should not be about is trendy politics. It should not be about token activism, buttons, and Facebook “likes.” Especially for me, a white male, material markers like a hoodie is hollow activism; nothing about my wearing a hoodie can be viewed as a subversive tool of protest, because I’m a white man wearing it, and my choice to do so was never questioned, never considered “suspicious,” and it never will be. It should not be about a (false) sense of pride, service, or ownership to the “cause,” and it should definitely not be about white people leading that cause, “saving” people of color from racial oppression, or “solving” the race paradigm for everyone else.
It should be about activating a more in-depth, structural, long-term dialogue.
It should be about the woman who clutches her purse when passing a person of color on a street sidewalk. It should be an ongoing discussion about normalized racism, and not only in response to the tragedies news outlets choose to sensationalize and blast across the media. (I’m equally as concerned for Shaima Alawadi and for all the other unheard-about minority-identifying people who were murdered by the violence of racism this week and did not have the same media attention to spread their narratives.) It should be about the too-legitimized institutions that perpetuate entrenched racism. It should be about removing the filters that silence the experiences of people of color. It should be about (deconstructing) the white savior industrial complex. It should be about reaching beyond the illusion that white people can forefront movements to “liberate” people of color.
I am not Trayvon Martin, but I am an ally of Travyon Martin and of every other person whose unique narrative is smothered by systems of privilege and power. I’m calling for activism that isn’t compromised by the hierarchy of power that continually fails to address it. I’m learning and listening and contributing my voice in the way I (constructively) know how, and I’m striving every day to do so out of the positive privilege of kindness and compassion. And that privilege, we all benefit from it.
a well done piece Tyler
*Dismantling the White Privileged in Activism (?) [the Kritik of Buttons and slacktivism?]
First, let me say I get the point. The problem of privileged white kids putting on buttons or doing trivial things to attempt a parlance with the struggle of the oppressed and discounting by ignoring the narratives of those who are now facing such social injustices is part of the problem–re-entrenches the status quo inequalities. Also, that the hierarchical control of the media and the salience of this one case does take great risk that others will see this case as an exception and not the rule—which it is not. (I.e. more the issue of the “stand your ground law” and less the issue of “why Trayvon was targeted in the first place.”)
Second, let me say that I do think Tyler’s criticism is constructive in that by bringing attention to both the evidence of the white privileged account and misplaced activism (or better put “slacktivism”) it shows a picture of what not to do. This is where the problems arise—knowing what not to do but never what TO DO.
The Article says “It should be about activating a more in-depth, structural, long-term dialogue.” Agreed! BUT—that assumes that the discourse created is one of inclusion not exclusion. There is a fine line between the “White Savior Industrial Complex” and attempting to do what is the next right thing in pushing for social justice in the face of blatant inequality. When that fine line pushes in the direction of dividing people along the lines of race, religion, and/ or ethnicity it is a regressive dialogue—so scuttles every semblance of the progressive outlook the movement would have you and I accept.
The problem in talking about race, religious creed, and/ or ethnicity is that you can’t talk about it. What has been created is a system and dialogue that preempts its success by setting up a discourse of exclusion which proffers more criticism than constructivism and burns more bridges than it builds. I’m sorry to say that I have no idea what the Article means by saying:
“I’m learning and listening and contributing my voice in the way I (constructively) know how, and I’m striving every day to do so out of the positive privilege of kindness and compassion. And that privilege, we all benefit from it.”
(Sure, everyone can get on board with such a statement—strive to be more compassionate and kind!)
What does that mean? What does learning and listening and contributing my voice in a way I CONSTRUCTIVELY KNOW HOW mean? Why is your ontology being implicitly privileged over mine or others?
What it means to me is that I’m going to talk about and listen to what others experience, feel, and know regarding the social injustices they face in their daily lives—I won’t speak for them unless with them as an ally. I believe in activism, living activism, and that activism lives in all who question the social injustices which pervade in the status quo. The article and this comment were written by “white” men and the editor prompting the article “white”—how is it dismantling White Privilege in Activism—according to the logic of the article it doesn’t. That is the problem; cast a net so wide that too few can meet the threshold of being rightfully included and the overwhelming population is excluded from the dialogue. Hence—the dialogue about race becomes the dialogue of exclusion and is prompted by the Liberals which would seemingly advocate for the opposite.
Point: criticize with caution and that one may be worrying about the trivialities like buttons or who wears them and overlooking the positive impact such buttons may have in continuance of a dialogue which calls into focus issues of social and racial injustice.
Take away: What I’ve taken from this article and I hope others will as well is that sometimes “doing the right thing isn’t doing the right thing.” Sometimes speaking out can be more destructive than constructive but the determination of that difference is the way in which one speaks out and how that contributes to change or reinforces the entrenched power structures of white privilege or (better yet) the X privileged X.
This open letter is worth reading, as it relates another argument against the dismantling of white privilege, specifically anti-racist practices, by people benefiting from white privilege:
http://www.nathanielturner.com/whiteantiracistsopenletter.htm
I disagree with pretty much the entirely of JJ’s summary and criticisms.
JJ starts with the argument that Tyler’s article moves towards an assumption of “exclusion” because it articulates race and racialized practices. Instead, JJ posits a more moderate version of the “colorblind” thesis of inclusion, which wants to side step race. JJ hasn’t elaborated much on this, but I’ve heard it before and it goes: We need to move beyond race when we talk about inequality, because the construction of race is how the inequality started. Notice a new theme: inequality.
Essentially, this argument wants to just obliterate the discussion, the “dialectic of race”. White privilege is the practice/expression (???) that orients the majority of the world. The particular practice of racialization, the construction of racial identities, is just that a practice. I find that there are two solutions to “dismantling” this dialectic of race and broader expression of white privilege – you either obliterate one of the concepts and start talking about something else entirely, ie., inequality (which is itself just one expression/ordering of racialization), or you chose the anti-thesis in the dialectic, which might be “anti-racism”. The first option is rather bogus.
You could also destroy the dialectic through radical “violence”, which is I guess another option.
JJ states that the second option “scuttles” the “progressive outlook” by “dividing people”. Yes, it is true that the structure of racism divides people – it populates our entire worldview with practices and identities that, for the most part, we (white people) easily take on, and force onto, others. In cases where we don’t have to force it now, it’s just because the force has been applied at an earlier time – perhaps momentum.
The option that seems to make the most sense is to continue a discussion about possibilities, to explore the anti-thesis. The perceived “problem” with the anti-thesis, which JJ points out, is that it has to use the thesis, race, in order to define itself, which lends its “divisive” or “exclusionary” appearance. I don’t think it’s exclusive at all – one can talk about race, racialization and how its ordered the world, critique it, challenge it, maybe even dismantle it, and, just maybe in doing this, not even perpetuate white privilege in doing so.
I think it’s possible to dismantle white privilege – that the future might be one in which those activities and practices are no longer constitutive of the hegemonic view – but it’s not a “progressive”/linear one. It’s not something that requires moving past/forward etc., That implies something about not looking back. So I think that’s a good start.
The ontology I am using is “privileged” in a sense, but it’s not an outright expression of “white privilege” (although my very being as a white person benefiting from white privilege has perhaps cast a resemblance on this ontology). It is not privileged for a few reasons: the ontology seems to be quickly dismissed or ridiculed, not discussed or explored when spoken about by white people to other white people. When “white privilege” evaluates an ontology like this and finds it lacking, to me that’s a sign that we should be looking harder at that ontology.
But I think I’ve given too much credit to JJ’s criticism about privileged ontologies. Just because Tyler practices from ontology that you do not have, or are not attempting to understand, does not mean he has “privilege” above and beyond “white privilege”. That’s a pretty common fallacy – using a term in two different contexts as if it applies equivocally in both.
“The article and this comment were written by “white” men and the editor prompting the article “white”—how is it dismantling White Privilege in Activism—according to the logic of the article it doesn’t.”
If you believe in the concept of dismantling or unpacking white privilege, then Tyler, the editor, and every commentator on this article is participating in that practice. Dismantling white privilege means discussing it and ultimately challenging it. Doing so does not require the direction of racialized peoples (although it can be instructive, if you listen). Go ask an anti-racist activist what you can do as a white person – they’ll tell you to figure it out on your own. It’s not their problem to figure out for you what to do if you want to be involved. In the open letter (linked at the beginning of this post), the author doesn’t not care to work through any of the problems for people benefiting from white privilege who want to practice as an anti-racist activist.
Tyler is not yelling over anyone in this context. If Tyler is vocal at all, it’s in a very specific context – which you’ve identified and isolated very well – among self-identified white peers, editors, commentators. Probably the best place to do any sort of “dismantling”.
A lot of this commentary can also be related in other contexts where people of white privilege (multiplicities of privilege) attempt to work alongside the “other”(s).
A2–S Franks:
JJUGA08@uga.edu
• I’m pretty sure I agree with almost everything that S Franks is talking about except the fact that it makes HUGE and UNWARRANTED theoretical assumptions about the nature of my response. Meaning what was said is legitimate but it misrepresents/ misinterprets my response by assuming a completely different theoretical lens of analysis.
o What the Response was NOT: (1) a moderate version of the colorblind thesis, (2) an attempt to destroy the “dialectic of race”, (3) a real commentary about the nature of race relations as it relates to the continuing systems of domination and the attempts to discredit the discourse which the left attempts to create in breaking down systems of domination that are by nature inherently bad.
• Other than that: I agree with pretty much the entirety of what Tyler’s article says and granting that I was only concerned with rhetoric.
o COFFEE? S Franks, considering that the goal of the article is to create a continuing dialogue I’d like nothing more than to sit down with you to discuss this case informally over a coffee… that way perhaps we could cut through my negligent miscommunication
Thank you so much for your brilliance and exemplary articulation & summation of this entire #TRAYVONMARTIN experience. There has been so much emotion injected into what should actually be a movement toward genuine dialogue with the goal of understanding & mutual respect.
I definitely get your point and agree with it, but I think one part of starting a dialogue is bringing attention to the problem and the issue in the first place. Which is something I believe the hoodies are doing. I think it is a way for people to express that they are allies for this cause, that they don’t agree with what is happening in the world, that racism is still a present day issue, and it is something we need to be talking about. When I went to one of those rallies, no I didn’t feel comfortable saying, “I am Trayvon Martin.” For that very reason… I’m not. As a white woman, I can never fully understand what a black man experiences in this world. But by wearing a hoodie, I can make a statement that I am aware of it, that I disagree, and that I want that message to spread.
White privilege, the leading cause of death of black males. Oh, wait.
Btw, similar shooting occurred in Atlanta a few days ago. Unarmed black teenager shot by armed adults. Wonder why we haven’t heard anything about it?