Yesterday morning I asked my partner if she knew anything about Trayvon Martin. I hadn't read a paper in weeks, or any online news articles for that matter, and we don't have television so I end up hearing everything through Facebook or from my students or other equally semi-reliable sources. My partner knew more than I did, and she told me what she knew, and then we sat together and read articles and looked at opinion pieces and blog posts. The new Sunday morning act of reading the paper, I suppose.
What I understood was that a white man (now identified as half-Latino), George Zimmerman, who was part of a neighborhood watch group in Sanford, Fl, and was on patrol during the incident, saw a young black man in a hoodie walking down his street. Already suspicious because of a string of home invasion robberies allegedly committed by a black suspect, Zimmerman armed with a gun pursued the man. From the 911 call made by one of Zimmerman's neighbors, screams for help can be heard in the background through half of the call and then the report of a gunshot, very clear, after which the screams stop. Apart from the spectrum of opinion articles that make some kind of political argument about the shooting and its circumstances, that's about all the facts I could make out (not even the ages of Zimmerman and Martin are always reported consistently).
What follows the incident is easier to parse. The police run a preliminary investigation and find that Zimmerman was within his legal right to shoot Trayvon under the protection of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, even though Trayvon turned out to be unarmed (some reports have him carrying a bag of Skittles). As discussed by the NY Times, the shooting, which occurred on February 26th, was slow to be covered by the national news outlets and was only picked up after Trayvon's parents hired a lawyer and made a concerted and brave effort to enlist the media themselves.
The storm followed and still continues, and what has precipitated (aside from Rivera's incredible stupidity) is a movement that focalizes itself around the piece of clothing, a hoodie, worn by Trayvon Martin when he was shot. The movement is decentralized, of course, but its efforts have been knit together by social media, resulting in certain coordinated activities, including the Million Hoodie March and an online petition by Trayvon's parents calling for the prosecution of George Zimmerman. The petition, circulated on Facebook, has as of this post been signed by just over 2 million people.
Some have been careful in stressing caution and thoughtfulness when it comes to participating as activists in a situation as volatile and complex as this. One blogger, Tenured Radical, found the movement's use of social media as particularly troubling in its "capacity . . . to eviscerate events of all their social and historical context." Trayvon Martin's hoodie, she argues, has been turned into a meme that Facebook activists can "Like" and then feel politically satisfied by doing so. Tenured Radical makes a good point in reminding us that by donning a hoodie we do not (and cannot) become Trayvon Martin and that we should take care or Trayvon's identity as a black man in America, and all that means, will be erased or distorted. The post has generated a great deal of interesting and often contentious discussion about the kinds of activism that make sense in this case. And I have to say, I don't think the solidarity generated in part by Facebook and Twitter is necessarily evil (there are plenty of academics and other commentators and activists who will keep the issue of race in America from being reduced to a meme or hashtag). The hoodie even has the potential for being a powerful symbol because it is something we all wear, but it's not something we all wear the same way. Those of us fortunate enough to be able to wear a hoodie with impunity will now have to think about Trayvon Martin, and the dangers he faced, every time we put it on. That new awareness in conjunction with active, intelligent dialogue doesn't seem like a bad thing.
It is not the solidarity that worries me, but the growing demand for retribution. If social media has the potential to mobilize political action in the service of social justice, it also has the ability to mobilize a mob that demands punishment and blood. This is where social media's reductionist ethos poses a very real threat. For instance, the petition created by Trayvon's parents demands that their son's "killer" be "prosecuted," and by killer they specify Zimmerman, and Zimmerman alone. It is their right to do so, but it is also our responsibility as human beings to ask why just Zimmerman? Zimmerman was within his rights under Florida law, he was tasked with protecting his neighborhood (a task that presupposes a threat), and he was trained to identify black men as threats (by neighborhood watch training, by the media, by growing up in America).
So how culpable is he? Just as none of us really knows what it's like to be Trayvon (no matter how many times we wear hoodies), we also don't know what it was like to be Zimmerman at that moment when he pulled the trigger, and we have yet to assess all of the circumstances that gave Zimmerman the authority to pull the trigger. Zimmerman is only part of it, and only one of the killers, and is probably the least culpable. The killers that should be prosecuted begin with the state and the institutions that gave Zimmerman his authority by passing and enforcing an inherently racist law, one that condones the use of deadly force by one citizen against another. It created the conditions that made it possible for Trayvon's hoodie and skin color to be understood as weapons just as dangerous as Zimmerman's firearm. Without the law, Zimmerman would probably not have been carrying a gun, and Trayvon would have walked home with his Skittles.
There are a swarm of other actants (or an assemblage, if you like), and to understand this crime and do something about it is to understand all of the actants and all of the pressures and all of the affectivities and all of the contributors. That is exactly what Facebook makes it difficult to do. Our "Like" buttons are the affirmation of a single cause and a reduction in responsibility. To like the petition to prosecute Zimmerman is also to like the reassurance that a single cause provides—its simple and easy justice predicated on the logic of the scapegoat—and it does nothing to make up for Trayvon's death. We could prosecute, imprison, and kill a thousand Zimmermans and nothing would change.
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