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

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-Camden 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 sustain 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. U NDERSTANDING THE M ATERIAL AND P SYCHOLOGICAL W AGES OF W HITENESS ...................................................................... 1122 B. T HE T ERROR OF “R ACE H ATRED ”: T HE M URDER OF E MMETT T ILL ....................................................................... 1127 C. P RESERVING W HITENESS IN THE J IM C ROW S OUTH : T HE M ATERIAL AND P SYCHOLOGICAL V ALUE OF W HITENESS TO M ILAM , B RYANT , AND T HEIR C HAMPIONS .............................. 1135 III. TRAYVON MARTIN, THE PROTECTION OF WHITENESS AS PROPERTY, AND SECURING “THE WHITE SPACE” ......................... 1151 A. P OST -C IVIL R IGHTS R ACISM AND THE P ROTECTION OF “T HE W HITE S PACE ” ............................................................. 1151 B. B EING “O UT OF P LACE ” IN A D IFFERENT W ORLD : T RAYVON M ARTIN AND A P OST -R ECESSION W HITELASH ......... 1157 C. A G ATED M ENTALITY : H OW C OMMONSENSE R ACISM , THE S OCIAL M EANING OF W HITENESS , AND THE P ROTECTION OF “T HE W HITE S PACE ” L ED TO T RAYVON M ARTIN ’ S D EATH ....... 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 Evidence also showed 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 THE 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. 1116 IOWA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 102:1113 remembrances of the long history of racial subordination and...