Trayvon Martin, Whistling Vivaldi and Whistling Dixie

I, like so many, am struggling to cope with the killing of Trayvon Martin and the trial of his killer. I am reading and reflecting on the many commentaries in an effort to make sense of it all.

One commentary that particularly struck me was by musician and author Questlove (Amir Khalib Thompson). Questlove wrote in New York Magazine about how the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his killer left Questlove feeling not only dismayed but devalued. For Questlove, Martin’s death was a reminder that too often, black lives seem not to count for very much. As Questlove notes, our very physical presence is sometimes a threat to good order. Questlove wrote:

I'm in scenarios all the time in which primitive, exotic-looking me — six-foot-two, 300 pounds, uncivilized Afro, for starters — finds himself in places where people who look like me aren't normally found. I mean, what can I do? I have to be somewhere on Earth, correct? In the beginning — let's say 2002, when the gates of "Hey, Ahmir, would you like to come to [swanky elitist place]?" opened — I'd say "no," mostly because it's been hammered in my DNA to not "rock the boat," which means not making "certain people" feel uncomfortable.

I mean, that is a crazy way to live. Seriously, imagine a life in which you think of other people's safety and comfort first, before your own. You're programmed and taught that from the gate. It's like the opposite of entitlement. 

The problem is, I do have desires to go to certain places and do certain things and enjoy the perks and benefits of being a person who works his arse off as much as I do. So I got over my hang-ups of not wanting to be the odd guy in the room sometime around 2007. It's been mixed results at best.

Sadly, the fear of black physical presence is not new. Questlove’s piece is reminiscent of an anecdote from the book Parallel Time:Growing Up in Black and White by Brent Staples. Staples wrote of his time moving about Chicago while a graduate student:

I tried to be innocuous but didn't know how. The more I thought about how I moved, the less my body belonged to me; I became a false character riding along inside it. I began to avoid people. I turned out of my way into side streets to spare them the sense that they were being stalked. I let them clear the lobbies of buildings before I entered, so they wouldn't feel trapped. Out of nervousness, I began to whistle and discovered I was good at it. My whistle was pure and sweet -- and also in tune. On the street at night, I whistled popular tunes from the Beatles and Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." The tension drained from people's bodies when they heard me. A few even smiled as they passed me in the dark.

Staples, like Questlove, comes from the position of being a large (over six feet tall) black man in a world that too often deems any black man, woman or even a child as a scary Negro. And if anyone doubts that black women and children fall into this category also, they haven’t lived in my shoes nor in any pair that remotely resembles my shoes.  Whether it is driving while black,  reunioning while black, or other WB (while black) incidents, too many black people face the perplexing, infuriating, heart-breaking, debilitating, dangerous, and sometimes fatal task of addressing what scholar Jody Armour labeled “negrophobia.”  Negrophobia is the notion that because of their perceived dangerousness, an otherwise irrational fear of blacks might be justified in situations where whites (or deemed whites—for as George Zimmerman reminds us, whiteness is frequently situational, contingent, delegated and/or relative) take preemptive action such as shooting to thwart a black attacker. This is the Trayvon Martin case in a nutshell.

 This scary Negro trope runs rampant through the minds, media and literature of a country that, for all of its racial progress in some areas, remains wedded to Birth of a Nation style anti-black imagery. Such imagery affronts black men in particular, rendering them as little more than exemplars of the criminalblackman—the mythic black wrongdoer posited by scholar Katheryn Russell Brown. 

 Whistling Vivaldi, negrophobia, the criminalblackman and the killing of  Trayvon Martin are all potent aspects of what social theorist Erving Goffman called discredited stigma—stigma resulting from differentness that is already known or is assumed on the spot. This difference of blackness “spoils" the identity of black people, often rendering irrelevant black people’s adherence to social norms and expectations in other aspects of their lives. If Staples whistled light-hearted pop tunes or classical music to allay the fears of mostly white passersby, he was only trying to assuage the fear of his stigma-ravaged black identity.


 All too often, however, no amount of whistling will calm the fear of blackness. Because this is true, assertions that the Trayvon Martin case was “not about race” leave us with no real way talk about what happened. A man thought someone looked “suspicious,” called police, acted against police advice and followed the allegedly suspicious person, thereby provoking a fight, and then shot and killed the unarmed person.  How does the story about initial suspiciousness or the subsequent fight make sense without viewing it from the lens of the discrediting stigma of blackness? It doesn’t—unless instead of whistling Vivaldi, you’re whistling Dixie.

Help Me Please Chase Away the WB's

I had a frenetic nightmare this morning between 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., the period when I took back to my bed for a nap to help remedy my night of wakefulness.  In the nightmare I was at a conference for black women lawyers in Los Angeles.  The beginning was fine and felt for a time like  a rather pleasant dream: I went sightseeing, recalling scenes from my Los Angeles childhood. I paid lovely visits to friends who were not at the conference and who do not live in Los Angeles in real life  but who nonetheless were present (A and J, you were there, along with the baby doggy, walking along the beach outside your beach house).

Soon this sightseeing phase of the dream ended and I drove back to the conference site.  I was early for the next meeting  so I went to return some children’s clothes that I had bought nearby but now on close inspection saw that they would be too small for my daughter. I gave the still-tagged clothes to the clerk along with my receipt.  He looked at them and frowned. “This isn’t our merchandise,” he snarled. “You got these from elsewhere and now you want a refund from us!” I was baffled and then I became angry.   He came from behind the counter and grabbed me and dragged me to the back of the store, and another man came to help him.   When I protested the clerk jabbed me in the arm with a sharp pencil, leaving a deep hole in my arm, a hole so deep and painful  that I looked for it when I awakened.  I screamed.  Other shoppers came running over including other participants at the black women lawyers’ conference. They, too, began to protest, telling the man that he was mistaken, that I had no reason to do what he said, and that I was a lawyer and law professor.  At that, the men let me go and threw my purchases back at me, still refusing to refund them.  I left, vowing to get even in every way I knew how.

When the conference started up again I asked to take to the microphone. I then told what had happened to an audience that looked like about 500 women.  They began screaming in anger and disbelief, and we made vows to stop the problem of shopping while black.

I awoke from the nightmare (or daymare in this case) with a headache that still persists and with a profound sense of anger and sadness.  I had no doubt that my dream was triggered by WB’s—while black incidents--that happened to me and my family during the last few weeks. I had not intended to blog about this.  I have other work to do, after all. I have, for example, piles of recent archive notes to write up and incorporate into my book. I planned to think more about the WB's later. But now that the WB’s are invading my dreams, I have to exorcise the demon.

I describe WB incidents as any disparate treatment of black people by persons with authority or under color of authority.  One of the best known of the WB’s is driving while black, DWB, the phenomenon whereby black people are stopped more frequently by police than whites or persons of other races for real or imaginary minor infractions. My husband and I were stopped a few weeks ago by a policeman who passed slowly by us in the opposite direction, stared into our car, and then made a sharp u-turn and pulled us over. He approached and asked for my husband’s drivers’ license.  My husband gave over his license and asked what the problem was and received no reply. The policeman and his partner then sat in their car behind us conducting what was I suppose a warrant check or checks for stolen vehicles.  After several minutes they approached us again, one coming to the driver’s side window and the other standing right behind him with his hand perched on his gun holster.  I wanted to take out my phone to record the interaction but I was too afraid to reach for my purse.

My husband again asked what the problem was and we were told that we had “shined our high beams” into the officer’s eyes.  I had noticed as we sat there that the high beams were on.  They had apparently been on all during our half-mile drive downhill to pick up our daughter from a school dance. We hadn’t passed any other cars, so it was not surprising that we didn’t notice.  This is generally a pretty friendly town and when drivers detect high beams on in another car they give a quick flash, the almost universal signal to turn down your lights. The incident ended with us apologizing for having the high beams on and we went on our way, chagrined by the whole matter.

Another common WB is shopping while black, SWB, such as what occurred in my dream. It occurs with alarming frequency in real life, too. I discuss such an incident here in my letter to the New York Times, addressing an incident wherein actor Forrest Whitaker was falsely accused of shoplifting.

I encountered an entirely new WB just a few days ago that I’ll call RWB--reunioning while black. My entire family and I went back to reunions at my Elite Undergraduate School and got a nice taste of RWB.  First, I was denied entry to my class reunion site by guards who somehow doubted the authenticity of my wristband, the mechanism for gaining entry into each reunion site.  I was livid and humiliated, especially as they insisted that “everyone” was subject to this treatment. I have never observed this over the decades since I graduated, and people were flowing in without challenge or notice even as they gave me close inspection. A short while later, one of my sons, who also attended Elite Undergraduate School, and who was also wearing a wristband, was denied entry to another reunion site by guards who wanted to know “who he was with” and where he was going.  My son had had enough when they asked him and his black friend, also a wristband-wearing graduate of Elite Undergraduate School, for identification.  They moved past the guards, knowing that they had the right to enter and hoping that the matter would go no further.  My lip quivered as my son related the story to me; this is how black people are killed for no reason, I thought.

I have no doubt that these two most recently experienced WBs, DWB and RWB, were responsible for my nightmare this morning. I have relieved some of the pain of the RWB incidents by talking with some concerned classmates about the matter and via communications with representatives of Elite Undergraduate School. I was grateful for these contacts, as one of the worst aspects of these situations is when people are aware of what happened to you and say Nothing. At. All.

I understand the silence in the face of WB incidents.  I really do. It is hard for some folks to accept (or believe) that educated, fairly accomplished black people are subject to WB incidents just like all the rest of black people. Perhaps as bad as the Silent Sams are those who try to diminish the problem. One person said, in response to my reunioning while black incident, “Oh, you should be glad that they want to keep us safe!” I didn’t know who “us” was (though I could hazard a good guess at who he meant) and I didn’t know what we were being kept “safe” from (that, too, I’m sure I could figure out.) Another person chuckled, “Oh, it’s because you look so young! They probably thought you were sneaking in for beer.” I hardly knew what to say. I’d like to flatter myself that I look younger than my years. But I don’t come close to resembling an under aged party crasher. I didn’t have the heart to point out to this person that many of the people coming in without challenge by the guards were white youths who DID, in fact, look like under aged party crashers.

I suppose what is really sending me for a loop is that this whole WB thing shows no sign of abating. It happened to me when I was a teenager, and I thought the problem would disappear when I was older. But so far, no luck. I am too often under scrutiny by clerks, police and other authorities. So, I smile.  I offer small talk. In short, I try to Make Them at Ease.  I Am Nice.  I am Black But (And?) I Am Good. I Am Not a Criminal.  I Am Like the Other People Here.  I Belong.

This is mentally and physically exhausting. I need reinforcements to help make the WB’s go away.