This week, I have been haunted by the image of Trayvon Martin.
Trayvon, an African-American teenager, was shot dead on 26 February 2012 by a self-appointed neighbourhood watch captain who thought the boy’s presence in a Florida gated community was suspicious. Returning from the store having bought an iced tea and a packet of skittles, Trayvon, dressed in a black hoodie, was followed by George Zimmerman, a man in his late twenties who just happened to have with him a semi-automatic weapon. As he walked back to his father’s house within the community, Trayvon was talking to a friend on the phone. He told her that a man was following him and that he was scared. She told him to run. Trayvon did, and thought he had lost his pursuer. Moments later, however, he was cornered and shot at point-blank range, guilty of little more than ‘walking while black.’
But there’s more. Although there were witnesses to the murder, and Zimmerman has admitted to killing Trayvon claiming he was acting in self-defence, he was not detained, arrested, or charged. Part of the reason is Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law, which states that a person can stand their ground and shoot someone if they reasonably believe they are under threat. I guess you have to wonder how someone with a zealous faith in ‘neighbourhood vigilanteism’ and a semi-automatic can ‘reasonably’ believe anything.
Overwhelmed by grief and anger at their son’s senseless killing and that the man responsible for it had not even been arrested, Trayvon’s parents’ call for justice has gained both national and international attention. Nearly a month after his death, on 21 March - the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (itself a memorial to the Sharpeville massacre in South Africa) - A Million Hoodie march for justice took place in New York and Philadelphia and a Peace March for Trayvon took place in Florida. Many people took to social media wearing black hoodies to show their solidarity for Trayvon and his family, and demand justice.
When asked about his response to the case, President Obama, in careful remarks intended not to impede an investigation by the Justice Department, said ‘I can only imagine what these parents are going through, and, when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids ... if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.’ He talked about the need for national soul-searching and praised the fact that federal, state and local authorities are working together in a thorough investigation.
When I first learnt of Trayvon’s death, I thought about how agonising it must be to a parent who has washed and fed and clothed and hugged and played and laughed with him, to learn that your son has met a violent death for no reason at all. Like President Obama, I thought about my own child and thought about how I would feel if something this terrible happened to her.
But, here’s the thing.
It’s highly unlikely that what happened to Trayvon will happen to her. Partly because she is a girl. Partly because she lives in New Zealand, where we don’t have a (vexed) constitutional right to bear arms. But, mostly, because she is white.
It is not my place, as a Pākehā / white person, to speak about the everyday ‘micro-agressions’ of racism. But I can - and should - speak about white privilege. Being white, or Pākehā in the New Zealand context, confers a set of privileges - which feminist critic Peggy McIntosh has described as an ‘invisible knapsack’ - to which most are unconscious beneficiaries. McIntosh comments:
Describing white privilege makes one newly accountable ... I began to understand why we are just seen as oppressive, even when we don't see ourselves that way. I began to count the ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege and have been conditioned into oblivion about its existence.
My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed the pattern my colleague Elizabeth Minnich has pointed out: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow "them" to be more like "us."
‘White privilege’ might sound like an American term to New Zealand ears, but it is relevant here too. Robert Consedine summarises how New Zealand’s colonial history has benefitted Pākehā in Healing our History and New Zealand Herald columnist Tapu Misa shows how this historical privilege impacts in the present.
In thinking about white privilege and what it means for my daughter (and me), I have come up with the following - incomplete - list:
1. She won’t be subject to casual racist slurs in the class room - as these young children were.
2. She won’t have to see dolls for sale that are crude caricatures of her facial features, nor have shopkeepers defend the sale of such items when the offence is pointed out to them, as in this case.
3. Nor will her ethnic background be used to sell ice-creams, which will continue to be sold even after they have been described as racist.
4. She won’t have to search high and low for the few dolls and Disney princesses - Jasmine, Mulan, Tiana and Pocahontas (themselves sometimes problematic) - that resemble her.
5. She won’t internalise an image of beauty that does not look like she does, and then torment herself when she doesn’t measure up, as the character Pecola Breedlove does in Toni Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye, or the winner of this speech competition.
6. If she is late for school, an assignment or a sports meeting, it won’t be blamed on her racial or ethnic background.
7. If she is good at sports or good at maths (or bad at either) it will be seen as a result of her individual achievement, not her racial or ethnic background.
8. She won’t constantly feel like a visible minority in her own country due to her skin colour, her clothing or her beliefs and practices.
9. She will not be subject to intimidation and fear if the police lock-down her community to search for would-be terrorists.
10. Statistically speaking, she is unlikely to leave school early with basic qualifications, find no or low-paid work, and she is unlikely to encounter prejudice in the health, education, and justice systems.
11. She is unlikely to be stopped while driving unless she’s actually breaking the law or going through a mandatory drink-driving checkpoint.
12. If she submits her CV for a job, she won’t be turned down for an interview as soon as the HR department sees her name (as has been shown to be the case in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.)
13. She is unlikely to hear a TV presenter describe people like her as not being New Zealanders, nor be told she is being ‘overly sensitive’ when she makes a complaint about it.
14. She is unlikely to be positioned as the sole spokesperson or representative of her racial or ethnic group.
My point with this list is not that my daughter shouldn’t be spared this discrimination, but that all children should be spared it.
And, given the events of recent weeks, here’s another one for the list:
15. She is unlikely to walk down the street in a hoodie and be shot in the chest at point-blank range for ‘acting suspicious’ by a ‘concerned citizen’ who has to date neither been arrested nor charged.
If only Trayvon Martin had had that privilege.
