Raising Cain...

Jackie Robinson, Trayvon Martin and the Sad History of Sanford, Florida | The Nation

Here's some more history linked to Sanford, Florida and the death of Trayvon Martin from sports writer Dave Zirin at The Nation:

The city of Sanford also has a past that speaks to the racism many believe to be at the heart of why Trayvon was killed and why the man who pulled the trigger was not arrested. I'm not arguing that Sanford, Florida, is somehow more or less twisted than anywhere else. Last month, unarmed, 18-year-old Ramarley Graham was killed in his bathroom by police in New York City. Last week Dane Scott Jr. in Del City, Oklahoma, was killed by police after a “scuffle.” The state medical examiner's office, however, declared Scott's death a homicide. The murder of Trayvon Martin is a “local issue” only if we understand “local” to mean local communities across the country.

But Sanford, Florida, does have its own history and it includes a collective moment of intolerance and bigotry that almost derailed the man Martin Luther King Jr. called “a freedom rider before freedom rides,” Jackie Robinson.

via www.thenation.com

More thoughts about Trayvon Martin and what it is that must not be named

Well, I think there might be another word to add to my list of stuff that can't be named: lynching.

In Trayvon Martin and the Deadly Legacy of Vigilantism, Jamilah King interviews Koritha Mitchell about her book, Living with Lynching. Mitchell talks a little bit about Without Sanctuary, James Allen's collection of lynching photographs:

The history of lynching in the U.S is really horrific and painful for a lot of black Americans. Why was it important for you to tell this story, in particular?

As painful as it is, we have not necessarily shied away from it — which I think is a good thing. One of the ways we haven’t shied away from it is through our support of and our facing it through the “Without Sanctuary” exhibition — those gruesome lynching photographs which had a stint at the Martin Luther King, Jr. center in Atlanta. That was one of the bigger moments where people really remarked upon how much black families were coming to it and using it as a way to grieve losses through generations.

What I found is that by using those photographs only as our way of trying to grapple with what lynching meant in our nation’s history, we really did ourselves a disservice. We weren’t able to engage with what black people who survived this violence had left us in terms of understanding what the violence meant.

The “Without Sanctuary” photographs are a big reason of why it was important for me to tell the story through the lynching plays because the lynching plays tells us exactly what the photographs cannot tell us because the photographs are from a white perspective. You needed to be somewhat safe at the lynching to take those photographs. You’ve got this isolated black victim surrounded by a mob of righteous-looking whites and that is all that we knew about lynching. But the construction of those photographs is very specific: it’s to make sure that you think this was an isolated man who didn’t have any connection to community. The plays give us a sense of just how connected to community and family those victims were.

via colorlines.com

I happened to see this exhibit when it was at the King center in Atlanta. A few years later I tried to write about it in the post that launched this blog...but I couldn't do it...I couldn't find the words. So I was very interested in Koritha Mitchell's comments on it, and generally how the interview connects some dots between Trayvon Martin's death, and a broader issue of the collective, historical trauma that vigilante actions imposed on African Americans as a group.

What Mitchell says about the photographs representing a white perspective, and the intention of the photos to make us think that "this was an isolated man who didn’t have any connection to community" added some critical pieces to my reflections on Trayvon Martin's murder. This is exactly the point I was making about the power of worldview in relation to maintaining broken systems. The photographs reflect a belief system sees the world as fragmented, isolated parts without connection to the whole. And such a world is deadly.

The other process that speaks to me through Mitchell's words is that of healing and transformation. In the social healing of oppressor-oppressed relationships, there is work that has to be done by each group within itself, and work that will not be complete without collaborative effort. Both pieces are essential. To collaborate effectively, I as a member of the oppressor group have to come to terms with my ancestral linneage and the ways in which I still am consciously or unconsciously identified with the oppressor's worldview. Through collaboration, all of us share dreams, stories, art, action and community that brings valuable new insight to the worlds of self and other, oppressor and oppressed.

I'm still not sure what to say about my experience viewing the "Without Sanctuary" exhibit, but I'll start with this: There is a certain trauma that comes with the realization of horrors perpetrated on another human being by one's own group. Opening up to that is difficult, and I think one thing "Without Sanctuary" represented for me is a point of no return. I can't go back to ignorance of what happened. I can only keep moving forward as fast as I can stand it.

In my practice of healing (working on my own stuff and helping others do the same), I've learned that perhaps the best thing any of us can do for healing the whole of humanity is to find and embrace our shadow selves, rather than to continue to project them onto someone else. As we have the courage to own who we are and where we came from -- no matter if we are the oppressed or oppressor -- we break the chains that have keep all of us bound together in hate and fear rather than love.

Do something today to eliminate racial discrimination

"Racism has been a banner to justify the enterprises of expansion, conquest, colonization and domination and has walked hand in hand with intolerance, injustice and violence." -- Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Guatemalan Indigenous Leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

 

The UN has designated March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The theme for 2012 is "Racism and Conflict," highlighting the fact that racism and discrimination often are at the root of deadly conflict.

I couldn't help but think of Trayvon Martin when I read that the theme was chosen to reflect how racism, prejudice and xenophobia create extreme tension and are used as powerful weapons to create fear or hatred. While the UN's declaration focuses on times of outright conflict in the world, I think we in the United States need to look within our own borders where white privilege (consciously and unconsciously) still maintains business as usual in unjust institutional systems. The racial profiling that led to the death of Trayvon Martin is just one recent example.

On Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell last night, Rep. Corrine Brown of Florida's Third District made a pitch for all of us to use this as a "teachable moment" -- what better day to start than on day dedicated to ending racial discrimination?

To me, the "teachable moment" idea is always a call to stop, take a deep breath, and climb to a higher mountain with a better view of the whole situation. Too often the potential of such powerful moments as Trayvon's death has brought us are destroyed in outrage against an individual perpetrator or the police or any one of a number individuals or agencies that will be targeted for blame. When the guilty party is tried and convicted, we go back to business as usual...until the next tragedy.

This reflects that our society is still in the grips of an outdated worldview that sees us all as separate beings in a world of unconnected parts. In such a belief system, the "bad apple" theory is used to explain racial violence.  Somebody has to be wholly at fault, and too often we're content to blame the victim. A society of living beings is reduced to something more like a car that won't run: all we have to do is find the broken part and take it out and replace it and everything will be fine again.

But nature (and ancient teachings and now science, by the way) tells us something different. Earth is a living system and we humans are all part of it, connected and interdependent, one to another and to all other parts. My human heart-brain tells me that Trayvon was my little brother, and yours, and even Zimmerman's.

What would we have to do to end racial discrimination once and for all? In a larger sense, I think we need a collective shift from the old paradigm of world as machine to world as a whole, dynamic, living system. I think that can begin with new ways of relating to (and engaging with) these teachable moments.

I'm recalling a theme in the Harry Potter series around the aversion most of the wizarding world had to saying "Voledemort" or acknowledging that Voldemort had returned, as if the name itself had some magical power and that saying it would somehow give Voldemort power over the person who said it.

Who or what is it that must not be named in the case of Trayvon Martin? That depends, of course, on who you are, what your life experience has been, and dozens of other factors. Speaking for myself as a member of the dominant group/culture in the United States, I would put white privilege, systemic racism and patriarchy at the top of the list. These are the shadows -- the Voldemorts -- that I have not always been able to see and name.

But see them and name them we must, and then carry on the social healing process that comes when we realize that the natural state of humanity is not "every man for himself" but "we're all in this together".

Some resources for the journey:

Beyond Whiteness -- A Resource for Dismantling White Privilege and Racism (website created by Be Scofield)

Applied Research Center (offers resources including webinars for learning how to get the conversation started)

 

 

"Racism continues to cause suffering for millions of people around the world.... I look to all people to join the United Nations in our drive to eliminate racism. We must, individually and collectively, stamp out racism, stigma and prejudice."

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon