Blackness is (always) on Trial (again): SCOTUS's VRA decision and the George Zimmerman trial

(Warning: this is a long piece. Please stay for the whole bit, though.) 

In the days following the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights Act, I was absolutely furious every unoccupied minute of the day. If I wasn’t engrossed in reading, writing, working with students, or training, I was stewing in my anger, completely incapable of articulating any kind of reasoned and unemotional response.

Rep. John Lewis, former chairman of SNCC, and Rep. John Conyers had strong reactions to the decision.

We couldn’t even get to 50 years of the Voting Rights Act’s life! It has literally been less than one full lifetime since black people in the South were subjected to ridiculous poll exams and literacy tests like this one. But apparently things have changed so it’s alright to gut the law’s key provision. I wonder why things have changed? Maybe – I don’t know – it might have something to do with the Voting Rights Act being a barrier to the kinds of legalized disenfranchisement that were one of the hallmarks of Jim Crow (and let’s be real, one of the hallmarks of the very founding of this country and its continued commitment to civic exclusion of black and brown people – but let’s not get into mass incarceration just yet). 

Thankfully, many folks have written excellent pieces on the decision and all the reasons why it is so asinine.

There really is no need to articulate another argument against the decision. Justice Ginsberg, writers at Colorlines, and even the folks over on The Daily Show, as well as numerous people of color with presences in social and traditional media and teachers and citizens across the country have illustrated myriads of reasons why the decision was wrong. So let it be said that I agree with this general position.  

One thing I would like to say, however, is that I think we should refuse to accept the burden to “prove” that “racism still exists,” because that burden is placed on the shoulders of anti-racists by the very assumption that the claim is somehow contestable – like there is legitimate reason to believe otherwise.

This is a direct parallel to the VRA case. In their ruling, the SCOTUS left in place the option for people to sue after the fact if they believe voter discrimination had taken place. This places the burden on the individual being disenfranchised (i.e. the individual who is already being disempowered by the power dynamics of race) to prove to the satisfaction of institutions of power that discrimination took place. Not only does this allow the problem to continue by adjusting the temporality of the problem-solving strategy from one of prevention to one of reaction (which in the end isn’t a problem-solving strategy at all!), but it continues the practice of placing the burden of proof on those arguing for an already marginalized form of knowledge. In the real world, epistemologies cannot be separated from power dynamics, and this is directly reflected in where we place the burden of proof in these cases of voter discrimination and these discussions of racism.    

This guy is the guy on trial. He is not Trayvon Martin.

This discussion of marginalized epistemologies also necessitates that we think about dominant epistemologies, or dominant cultural narratives which become epistemologies. And so we turn to the George Zimmerman trial.

Not the Trayvon Martin trial. Trayvon Martin is not on trial. He is dead.

But actually, he kind of is on trial. You see, while what this case is trying to decide is whether or not Zimmerman is guilty of murder, it has also become a performance where his defense attorneys try to convince the jury that Martin was assaulting Zimmerman and the latter therefore had a right to kill Martin in order to stop him.

Let this sink in for a second: Nobody debates the fact that Zimmerman killed Martin. Nobody debates the fact that after being told not to follow Martin, Zimmerman pursued the boy anyway. Yet, what the entire defense rests on is proving that Zimmerman was justified in killing Martin.

How to do that? By drawing on hegemonic epistemologies, based on dominant cultural narratives, that say that (young) black men (or teenagers) are inherently violent. Therefore, despite being older, stronger, much bigger, and much more armed for combat than Martin, according to this epistemology it was totally reasonable that Zimmerman – after being the one to follow Martin and therefore being the one whose actions made conflict possible in the first place – be afraid of Martin. Afraid enough that he’d have to stand his ground. 

(Michael Denzel Smith makes this point, but does it better, in his article on The Nation.) 

I wonder… if Martin had been armed with a gun instead of Skittles and Iced Tea, and he killed Zimmerman because, well, the creepy neighborhood-watchman who was twice his size (yes, exaggeration – get over it) was following him when all he was doing was minding his own business and therefore felt threatened and frightened, would folks be as willing to believe Martin was Standing his Ground?

I’ll answer my own question. No.

And yes, the reason is because he was a black boy wearing a hoodie in a neighborhood where he “shouldn’t have been.”

Also, read this article by Sergi Avteniev on the scrutiny and racism aimed at Rachel Jeantel. I really can’t say it any better than he does, so please go read it.

But what does this have to do with the SCOTUS’s VRA decision, right? I mean, besides the courtroom setting.

What we are witnessing in these two cases is the relationship between law and blackness in the United States. And this relationship can be summed up by the phrase “anti-blackness.”

Since enslaved Africans were designated as 3/5s of a person in the legal document that founded our current government, black subjecthood has forever been on unequal terms with American subjecthood (to echo a powerful piece from March by Ta-Nehisi Coates, What does it mean to have never been meant to be a part of the American story?). Blackness is always on trial. Blackness always bears the burden of proof. Blackness is always expendable, and yet is also always necessary.

The Voting Rights Act was one instance of hope. One way of offering, if not protection, then meaningful difference (to draw on Toni Morrison’s novel, A Mercy). And when the Supreme Court of the United States decided we didn’t need its most important and powerful provision anymore, they decided that blackness had once again gotten too close to full inclusion in American civil existence. Thus, the borders were retracted.

And celebration followed.