Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Tragedy of Being 'Out of Place' from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin

• Author: Angela Onwuachi-Willig
• Position: Chancellor's Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley
• Pages: 1113-1185

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Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness:

The Tragedy of Being “Out of Place” from

Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin

Angela Onwuachi-Willig*

ABSTRACT: This Article takes what many view as an extraordinary case

about racial hatred from 1955, the Emmett Till murder and trial, and

analyzes it against the Trayvon Martin killing and trial outcome in 2012

and 2013. Specifically, this Article exposes one important, but not yet

explored similarity between the two cases: their shared role in policing the

boundaries of whiteness as a means of preserving the material and the

psychological benefits of whiteness. This policing occurred in a variety of

forms, including: (1) maintaining white racial separation; (2) facilitating

cross-class, white racial solidarity; (3) articulating blackness, and specifically

black maleness, as a threat; and (4) regulating the presence and movement

of Blacks in what sociologist Elijah Anderson has defined as “the white

space.” This Article also delineates how the strategies, practices, and tactics

for protecting whiteness and its attendant advantages and benefits have

* Chancellor’s Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley; aonwuachi@law. berkeley.edu.

Thanks to Dean Melissa Murray, Dean Gail Agrawal, and Charles M. and Marion J. Kierscht for

their research support. My research assistants provided invaluable assistance. I also thank Kathy

Abrams, Akhil Reed Amar, Mario Barnes, Rabia Belt, Shanna Benjamin, Alafair Burke, Bennett

Capers, Devon Carbado, Karla Erickson, Bill Eskridge, Ron Eyerman, James Forman, Andrea

Freeman, Heather Gerken, Cynthia Godsoe, Bob Gordon, Aya Gruber, Matthew Jacobson, Ian

Haney López, Stacy Hawkins, Vinay Harpalani, Patrick Inglis, Kevin Johnson, Trina Jones, Al

Lacson, Robin Lenhardt, Tamara Lawson, Taeku Lee, Nancy Levit, Daniel Markovits, Natasha

Martin, Tracey Meares, Kimani Paul-Emelie, Judge Robert Pratt, Judith Resnik, Song Richardson,

Reva Siegel, Jessica Silbey, Catherine Smith, Peggie Smith, Leti Volpp, John Witt, and Gideon

Yaffe for their helpful comments and support on this Article. I give specific thanks to Elijah

Anderson, Ron Eyerman, and Crystal Feimster. My sincere thanks are also given to editors, Reece

Clark, Bri'An Davis, Ben Gillig, Clare Horan, Jon Woodruff, and all other editors who worked on

this Article. This effort has been especially meaningful as Bri'An, Clare, and Ben are my former

students. This project gained much from feedback at the Yale Legal Theory Workshop, the Iowa

Legal Studies Workshop, the University of Texas Workshop Series, the Lutie A. Lytle Black

Women Law Faculty Workshop, the University of Connecticut Workshop Series, the University of

Denver Sturm College of Law Speaker Series, Rutgers University-Cam den School of Law

Workshop Series, and the American Bar Foundation. It also gained much from comments after

lectures at Luther College, the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Savannah Law School,

and Valparaiso University School of Law, and Introduction to Sociology at Grinnell College.

Finally, I give special thanks to my husband, Jacob Willig-Onwuachi, and our children, Elijah,

Bethany, and Solomon for their constant love and support.

1114 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 102:1113

shifted from explicit actions in thwarting, punishing, and even violently

resisting challenges to black racial subordination and white authority to

ostensibly “race-neutral” actions that promote a type of thinking that legal

scholar Ian Haney López calls “commonsense racism,” and that sustai n a

form of rationalizing racial inequities and injustices that sociologist Eduardo

Bonilla-Silva refers to as “colorblind racism.” Ultimately, this Article

demonstrates how the same race-based forces and the same racist tropes that

undergirded the Till case in 1955 are still operating today, even as

meaningful changes have occurred in the practice of racism in the country.

I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1114

II. EMMETT TILL AND THE PROTECTION OF WHITENESS ................. 1122

A. UNDERSTANDING THE MATERIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WAGES

OF WHITENESS ...................................................................... 1122

B. THE TERROR OF “RACE HATRED”: THE MURDER OF

EMMETT TILL ....................................................................... 1127

C. PRESERVING WHITENESS IN THE JIM CROW SOUTH: THE

MATERIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL VALUE OF WHITENESS TO

MILAM, BRYANT, AND THEIR CHAMPIONS .............................. 1135

III. TRAYVON MARTIN, THE PROTECTION OF WHITENESS AS

PROPERTY, AND SECURING “THE WHITE SPACE” ......................... 1151

A. POST-CIVIL RIGHTS RACISM AND THE PROTECTION OF

“THE WHITE SPACE” ............................................................. 1151

B. BEING “OUT OF PLACE” IN A DIFFERENT WORLD:

TRAYVON MARTIN AND A POST-RECESSION WHITELASH ......... 1157

C. A GATED MENTALITY: HOW COMMONSENSE RACISM, THE

SOCIAL MEANING OF WHITENESS, AND THE PROTECTION OF

“THE WHITE SPACE” LED TO TRAYVON MARTIN’S DEATH ....... 1168

IV. CONCLUSION .............................................................................. 1185

I. INTRODUCTION

February 26, 2017 marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Trayvon

Martin, the African American teenager whose life was tragically cut short

when George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain for a gated

community in Sanford, Florida called “The Retreat at Twin Lakes,” shot and

killed the 17-year-old as he was walking back from a candy and drink run to a

convenience store.1 After the shooting, Sanford police officers released

1. Madison Gray, Trayvon Martin, One Year Later: Where We Are Now, TIME (Feb. 26, 2013),

http://nation.time.com/2013/02/26/trayvon-martin-one-year-later-where-we-are-now.

2017] POLICING THE BOUNDARIES OF WHITENESS 1115

Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man of white American and Peruvian descent,

claiming they found no evidence to contradict Zimmerman’s assertion that

he acted in self-defense after Martin attacked him.2 Evidence later revealed

that Zimmerman, who saw Martin walking in the neighborhood as he was

driving to Target, called 911 to report Martin as a “suspicious person,” but

then disregarded the 911 operator’s directives to remain in his car and leave

Martin alone.3 Instead, Zimmerman chased, confronted, and ultimately shot

and killed Martin after a physical struggle.4 Evid ence al so show ed that Martin ,

who had no criminal record, was simply returning to the home of Brandy

Green, where he was a guest; Green, a resident of the Retreat at Twin Lakes,

was the girlfriend of Martin’s father, Tracey Martin.5 At the time of his death,

Martin had nothing on his person but his cellphone, an Arizona watermelon

soda, a bag of Skittles, $40.15 in cash, a cigarette lighter, and some

headphones.6

The death of Trayvon Martin inspired nationwide conversations about

racism, racial profiling, implicit bias, police brutality, and numerous

inequities in the criminal justice system.7 Martin’s death also sparked

2. CJR Staff, Reporting Trayvon, COLUM. JOURNALISM REV. (Apr. 2, 2012), http://www.cjr.org/

behind_the_news/reporting_trayvon.php; History of Racial Tension for Sanford and Blacks, GRIO (Mar.

23, 2012, 8:31 AM), http://thegrio.com/2012/03/23/history-of-racial-tension-for-fla-city-and-blacks.

3. Trayvon Martin Shooting Fast Facts, CNN (Feb. 7, 2016, 4:25 PM), http://www.cnn.com/

2013/06/05/us/trayvon-martin-shooting-fast-facts.

4. Id.

5. See LISA BLOOM, SUSPICION NATION: THE INSIDE STORY OF TH E TRAYVON MARTIN

INJUSTICE AND WHY WE CONTINUE TO REPEAT IT 39 (2014).

6. Teresa M. Bruce, Terrorism Du Jour: How the Trayvon Martin Case Exposes an Endemic

Regime of Fear That Keeps Black Males and Females of All Colors in a State of Subjugation, 21 UCLA

WOMEN’S L.J. 1, 6 (2014).

7. See, e.g., Valena Elizabeth Beety, What the Brain Saw: The Case of Trayvon Martin and the

Need for Eyewitness Identification Reform, 90 DENV. U. L. REV. 331, 331 (examining “the role of

memory and perception in the death of Trayvon Martin and in eyewitness identification in

criminal cases” and suggesting reforms to avoid witness misidentifications); Mark S. Brodin, The

Murder of Black Males in a World of Non-Accountability: The Surreal Trial of George Zimmerman for the

Killing of Trayvon Martin, 59 HOW. L.J. 765, 767 (2016) (examining the trial of George

Zimmerman and highlighting how the “prosecutors committed the most inexplicable strategic

and evidentiary blunders of a type that experienced prosecutors would very likely not commit in

a more earnest effort to convict the accused”); Bruce, supra note 6, at 2 (exploring “the depth of

suffering caused by unprovoked, racially or sexually motivated, aggression” and analogizing that

“sort of aggression to terrorism”); Cynthia Lee, (E)Racing Trayvon Martin, 12 OHIO ST. J. CRIM. L.

91, 95 (2014) (arguing that the best way to overcome the employment of stereotypes and bias in

the criminal justice system is to “call[] attention to race to encourage jurors to consciously combat

stereotypical thinking”); Cynthia Lee, Making Race Salient: Trayvon Martin and Implicit Bias in a Not

Yet Post-Racial Society, 91 N.C. L. REV. 1555, 1555, 1564 (2013) [hereinafter Making Race Salient]

(proposing “that prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys who are concerned about the

operation of implicit racial bias should attempt to make race salient in the criminal courtroom”

because “calling attention to the relevance of race in a given situation encourages individuals to

suppress what would otherwise be automatic, stereotypic congruent responses in favor of acting

in a more egalitarian manner”); Camille Gear Rich, Angela Harris and the Racial Politics of

Masculinity: Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, and the Dilemmas of Desiring Whiteness, 102 CALIF. L.