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Emmett and Trayvon: How Racial Prejudice Has Changed in the Last 60 Years

By Elijah Anderson

Separated by a thousand miles, two state borders, and nearly six decades, two young African- American boys met tragic fates that seem remarkably similar today: both walked into a small market to buy some candy; both ended up dead.

The first boy is Emmett Till, who was 14 years old in the summer of 1955 when he walked into a local grocery store in Money, Miss., to buy gum. He was later roused from bed, beaten brutally, and possibly shot by a group of White men who later dumped his body in a nearby river. They claimed he had stepped out of his place by flirting with a young White woman, the wife of the store’s owner. The second boy is Trayvon Martin, who was 17 years old late last winter when he walked into a 7-Eleven near a gated community in Sanford, Fla., to buy Skittles and an iced tea.

He was later shot to death at close range by a mixed-race man, who claimed Martin had behaved suspiciously and seemed out of place. The deaths of both boys galvanized the nation, drew sympathy and disbelief across racial lines, and, through the popular media, prompted a reexamination of race relations.

In the aftermath of Martin’s death last February, a handful of reporters and columnists, and many members of the general public, made the obvious comparison: Trayvon Martin, it seemed, was the Emmett Till of our times. And, while that comparison has some merit-the boys’ deaths are similar both in some of their details and in their tragic outcome-these killings must also be understood as the result of very different strains of racial tension in America.

The racism that led to Till’s death was embedded in a virulent ideology of White racial superiority born out of slavery and the Jim Crow codes, particularly in the Deep South. That sort of racism hinges on the idea that Blacks are an inherently inferior race, a morally null group that deserves both the subjugation and poverty it gets.

The racial prejudice that led to Trayvon Martin’s death is different. While it, too, was born of America’s painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order-that Blacks have their “place” in  society-it in addition reflects the urban iconography of today’s racial inequality, namely the Black ghetto, a uniquely urban American creation. Strikingly, this segregation of the Black community coexists with an ongoing racial incorporation process that has produced the largest Black middle class in history, and that reflects the extraordinary social progress this country has made since the 1960s. The civil rights movement paved the way for Blacks and other people of color to access public and professional opportunities and spaces that would have been unimaginable in Till’s time.

While the sort of racism that led to Till’s death still exists in society today, Americans in general have a much more nuanced, more textured attitude toward race than anything we’ve seen before, and usually that attitude does not manifest in overtly hateful, exclusionary, or violent acts. Instead, it manifests in pervasive mindsets and stereotypes that all Black people start from the inner-city ghetto and are therefore stigmatized by their association with its putative amorality, danger, crime, and poverty. Hence, in public, a Black person is burdened with a negative presumption that he or she must disprove before being able to establish mutually trusting relationships with others.

Most consequentially, Black skin when seen in public, and its association with the ghetto, translates into a deficit of credibility as Black skin is conflated with lower-class status. Such attitudes impact poor Blacks of the ghetto one way and middle-class Black people in another way.

While middle-class Blacks may be able to successfully overcome the negative presumptions of others, lower-class Blacks may not. For instance, all Blacks, particularly “ghetto-looking” young men, are at risk of enduring yet another “stop and frisk” from the police as well as discrimination from potential employers shopkeepers, and strangers on the street. Members of the Black middle class and Black professionals may ultimately pass inspection and withstand such scrutiny; many poorer blacks cannot. And many Blacks who have never stepped foot in a ghetto must repeatedly prove themselves as non-ghetto, often operating in a provisional status (with something more to prove), in the workplace or, say, a fancy restaurant, until they can convince others-either by speaking “White” English or by demonstrating intelligence, poise, or manners-that they are to be trusted, that they are not “one of those” Blacks from the ghetto, and that they deserve respect. In other words, a middle-class Black man who is, for instance, waiting in line for an ATM at night will in many cases be treated with a level of suspicion that a middle-class White man simply does not experience.

But this pervasive cultural association-Black skin equals the ghetto-does not come out of the blue. After all, as a result of historical, political, and economic factors, Blacks have been contained in the ghetto. Today, with persistent housing discrimination and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, America’s ghettos face structural poverty. In addition, crime and homicide rates within those communities are high, young Black men are typically the ones killing one another, and ghetto culture – made iconic by artists like Tupac Shakur, 50 Cent, and the Notorious B.I.G. – is inextricably intertwined with blackness.

As a result, in America’s collective imagination the ghetto is a dangerous, scary part of the city. It’s where rap comes from, where drugs are sold, where hoodlums rule, and where The Wire might have been filmed. Above all, to many White Americans the ghetto is where “the Black people live,” and thus, as the misguided logic follows, all Black people live in the ghetto. It’s that pervasive, if accidental, fallacy that’s at the root of the wider society’s perceptions of Black people today. While it may be true that everyone who lives in a certain ghetto is Black, it is patently untrue that everyone who is Black lives in a ghetto. Regardless, Black people of all classes, including those born and raised far from the inner cities and those who’ve never been in a ghetto, are by virtue of skin color alone stigmatized by the place.

I call this idea the “iconic ghetto,” and it has become a powerful source of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination in our society, negatively defining the Black person in public. In some ways, the iconic ghetto reflects the old version of racism that led to Till’s death. In Till’s day, a Black person’s “place” was in the field, in the maid’s quarters, or in the back of the bus. If a Black man was found “out of his place,” he could be punished, jailed, or lynched. In Martin’s day-in our day-a Black person’s “place” is in the ghetto. If he is found “out of his place,” like in a fancy hotel lobby, on a golf course, or, say, in an upscale community, he may easily be mistaken, treated with suspicion, avoided, pulled over, frisked, arrested-or worse.

Trayvon Martin’s death is an example of how this more current type of racial stereotyping works. While the facts of the case are still under investigation, from what is known it seems fair to say that George Zimmerman, Martin’s killer, saw a young Black man wearing a hoodie and assumed he was from the ghetto and therefore “out of place” in the Retreat at Twin Lakes, Zimmerman’s gated community. Until recently, Twin Lakes was a relatively safe, largely middle-class neighborhood. But as a result of collapsing housing prices, it has been witnessing an influx of renters and a rash of burglaries. Some of the burglaries have been committed by Black men. Zimmerman, who is himself of mixed race (of Latino, Black, and White descent), did not have a history of racism, and his family has claimed that he had previously volunteered handing out leaflets at Black churches protesting the assault of a homeless Black man.

The point is, it appears unlikely that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin simply because he hates Black people as a race. It seems that he put a gun in his pocket and followed Martin after making the assumption that Martin’s Black skin and choice of dress meant that he was from the ghetto, and therefore up to no good; he was considered to be a threat. And that’s an important distinction.

Zimmerman acted brashly and was almost certainly motivated by assumptions about young black men, but it is not clear that he acted brutally out of hatred for Martin’s race. That certainly does not make Zimmerman’s actions excusable, Till’s murderers acted out of racial hatred.

The complex racially charged drama that led to Martin’s death is indicative of both our history and our rapid and uneven racial progress as a society. While there continue to be clear demarcations separating Blacks and Whites in social strata, major racial changes have been made for the better. It’s no longer uncommon to see Black people in positions of power, privilege, and prestige, in top positions in boardrooms, universities, hospitals, and judges’ chambers, but we must also face the reality that poverty, unemployment, and incarceration still break down largely along racial lines.

This situation fuels the iconic ghetto, including a prevalent assumption among many White Americans, even among some progressive Whites who are not by any measure traditionally racist, that there are two types of Blacks: those residing in the ghetto, and those who appear to have played by the rules and become successful. In situations in which Black people encounter strangers, many often feel they have to prove as quickly as possible that they belong in the latter category in order to be accepted and treated with respect.

As a result of this pervasive dichotomy-that there are “ghetto” and “non-ghetto” Blacks-many middle-class Blacks actively work to separate and distance themselves from the popular association of their race with the ghetto by deliberately dressing well or by spurning hip-hop, rap, and ghetto styles of dress. Similarly, some Blacks, when interacting with Whites, may cultivate an overt, sometimes unnaturally formal way of speaking to distance themselves from “those” black people from the ghetto.

But it’s also not that simple. Strikingly, many middle class Black young people, most of whom have no personal connection with the ghetto, go out of their way in the other direction, claiming the ghetto by adopting its symbols, including styles of dress, patterns of speech, or choice of music, as a means of establishing their authenticity as “still Black” in the largely White middle class they feel does not fully accept them; they want to demonstrate they have not “sold out.” Thus, the iconic ghetto is, paradoxically, both a stigma and a sign of authenticity for some American Blacks-a kind of double bind that beleaguers many middle-class Black parents.

Despite the significant racial progress our society has made since Till’s childhood, from the civil rights movement to the re-election of President Obama, the pervasive association of Black people with the ghetto, and therefore with a certain social station, betrays a persistent cultural lag. After all, it has only been two generations since schools were legally desegregated and five decades since Blacks and Whites in many parts of the country started drinking from the same water fountains.

If Till were alive today, he’d remember when restaurants had “White Only” entrances and when stories of lynchings peppered The New York Times. He’d also remember the Freedom Riders, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Million Man March. He’d remember when his peers became generals and justices, and when a Black man, just 20 years his junior, became president of the United States. As I am writing, he would have been 73 – had he lived.

Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His latest book is The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life. This article, the second of an 11-part series on race, is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was originally published by the Washington Monthly Magazine.

BOTTOMLINE…

Douglas A. Blackmon is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” He teaches at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and is a contributing editor at the Washington Post. This article, the first of an 11-part series on race, is sponsored by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and was originally published by the Washington Monthly Magazine

In the first years after the Civil War, even as former slaves optimistically swarmed into new schools and lined up at courthouses at every whisper of a hope of economic independence, the Southern states began enacting an array of interlocking laws that would make all African-Americans criminals, regardless of their conduct, and thereby making it legal to force them into chain gangs, labor camps, and other forms of involuntarily servitude. By the end of 1865, every Southern state except Arkansas and Tennessee had passed laws outlawing vagrancy and defining it so vaguely that virtually any freed slave not under the protection of a White man could be arrested for the crime. An 1865 Mississippi statute required Black workers to enter into labor contracts with White farmers by January 1 of every year or risk arrest. Four other states legislated that African Americans could not legally be hired for work without a discharge paper from their previous employer-effectively preventing them from leaving the plantation of the White man they worked for.

After the return of nearly complete White political control in 1877, the passage of those laws accelerated. Some, particularly those that explicitly said they applied only to African-Americans, were struck down in court appeals or through federal interventions, but new statutes embracing the same strictures on Black life quickly replaced them. Most of the new laws were written as if they applied to everyone, but in reality they were overwhelmingly enforced only against African- Americans.

In the 1880s, Alabama, North Carolina, and Florida passed laws making it a crime for a Black man to change employers without permission. It was a crime for a Black man to speak loudly in the company of a White woman, a crime to have a gun in his pocket, and a crime to sell the proceeds of his farm to anyone other than the man he rented land from. It was a crime to walk beside a railroad line, a crime to fail to yield a sidewalk to White people, a crime to sit among Whites on a train, and it was most certainly a crime to engage in sexual relations with-or, God forbid, to show true love and affection for-a White girl.

I know that there are a thousand objections to this thought, but if someone will list the objections, I am willing to seek the a means to dismiss them. If the city formed a police academy, most objections would become mute.

Please agree or disagree via this post.

Publisher’s Commentary by Wallace J. Allen, IV –
Edition – Thursday, July 7, 2011 – Volume 25 No. 45

The Question: Is It Money Well Invested Or Simply Spent? – How many projects have been funded by Your City Redevelopment Agency in the last five years? – How much money was funded per project? – How many contracts and subcontracts were involved per project? – How many Contractors and Sub-Contractors were involved per Project? – How many Contractors and Sub-Contractors were used in total? – How many Contractors from Your City were used? – How many Sub-Contractors from Your City were used? – How many jobs have been created by Your City Redevelopment Agency in the last five years? – How many jobs that were created by RDA funded projects, were filled by residents of Your City? I am sure that someone, somewhere in the RDA Agency in Your City has the answers to these specific questions. I think those answers will tell you a little more about who benefits when RDA Agencies spend or invest your tax dollars by the tens of millions. My Answer: If you are one of the people collecting a check… Contractors, Suppliers, Sub Contractors and Workers including Your City Staff’s Earned Wages… You probably think the money was Well Invested! On The Other Hand, (The One That Did Not Get A Finger In The Money Pie)… The Contractor seeking contracts, unemployed job seeking, tax paying stakeholders, that live in Your City, probably think the money was Simply Spent!

Guest Commentary by Lita Pezant

People across Latin America (and many in North America) are mourning the loss of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died last Tuesday, March 2, at the age of 58, after struggling with cancer over the last two years, and leading his nation for fourteen years. World leaders, including President Obama, sent their condolences, some even going straight to Caracas, Venezuela to mourn directly. People gathered in nations throughout South America, Central America, and the Caribbean; some mourners gathering at Venezuelan embassies, some in communities across the U.S.A, to pay their respects, hold vigils, and bring tributes to remember Hugo Chávez: a President of and for the People. Hugo Chávez was both loved and despised for helping to uplift the people of his nation. Elected four times with overwhelming majorities, the official U.S. government (home of the infamous ‘selected not elected’ Bush presidency) constantly questioned his presidential legitimacy and worked to overthrow him. Chávez’ response was to declare his own manhood and independence by daring to speak to world leaders that were not on the approved ‘guest list’: Castro (Cuba), Khadafi (Libya), Ahmadinejad (Iran), and Bolivia’s first native indigenous President Evo Morales. Upon his first election, Hugo Chávez inherited the reigns of a nation where 3% of the people owned 77% of the wealth — sound familiar? Chávez was a great president and a hardworking leader who changed the landscape of Venezuela, first insisting that oil corporations (who were reaping 87% profits from Venezuelan oil) return 30% to the government; and then he nationalized the resource. Compare that to Nigeria, where the U.S. has ‘good’ relations’ yet Shell Oil destroys the land with impunity, and protesting leaders are assassinated for questioning why the indigenous native tribes are receiving no benefits from the oil extracted from their lands. Tired of the World Bank ‘switcheroo’ that keeps Third World nations poor, Chávez worked with other Latin American presidents of Argentina and Brazil to develop the Bank of the South, so these countries could independently set their own financial standards and establish their own credit markets. Finding that he and other Latin leaders were also fed up with the imbalanced scope of U.S. Free Trade Agreements, Chávez joined Castro and Morales to form the People’s Trade Treaty for their respective nations. Chávez provided free public education to hundreds of thousands of children who had never had access to classrooms before his presidency. The U.S. has ‘good’ relations with Jamaica, but children still have to pay to go to school there. Before Chávez, millions of Indigenous and Black Venezuelans were never issued birth certificates or identification papers, effectively preventing them from full access to the rights of citizenship— that sound familiar too? Through it all, Chávez, a devout Christian, reached his hand out in friendship to those who would help him improve his nation and the quality of life for its people, and in turn he extended his hand in generosity to those in need across the globe. Chávez, along with Castro, offered food, supplies, fuel, and water purifiers to those devastated during the early aftermath of hurricane Katrina, only to be rebuffed by the Bush administration – and we all know how quickly they came to the rescue. The generosity of Chávez and the Venezuelan people is also demonstrated in the provision of free heating oil to thousands of poor people in the United States through the Venezuelan oil company Citgo. Gosh come to think of it, Hugo Chávez probably helped more needy folks in the U.S. than the ‘Do Nothing’ 112th and 113th Congress combined. I for one was a little disappointed that a positive relationship that did not occur between President Chávez and our beloved President Obama. One might think that President Obama could have sought common ground with Chávez on at least a few things. Both were (and are) vilified, called out of name, and have had their rightful citizenship and birthright questioned without any basis in fact. Both were descendants of mixed ‘race’ parentage, and faced obstructionists who despised them for merely being the wrong color to be strong, independent, and ready for the reins of power. Both challenged conventional stereotypes to succeed. Both were elected on an emotional wave of the promise of Hope, seeking to rebuild their nations following economic disaster and massive financial and government corruption. Obama promised to end both wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) his predecessor started; and Chávez promised that he would never order troops to fire upon civilians as his predecessor did. Both held steadfast to those promises. Pointedly, each also established a form of universal health care during their respective first terms. Actually Chávez did his a bit quicker by trading with Castro for the provision of excellent Cuban medical and healthcare services — something many Black Americans have wanted access to for a long time — another example of ‘Free Trade’ not working for us. Unfortunately, U.S. foreign policy is rife with inconsistency and hypocrisy, designed to confuse, perplex, and control the citizenry. It is a pity how the ‘old ways’ of the ‘Cold War’ creep insidiously into the new millennium. Our government allows companies to do Billions in business with Communist China and Communist Vietnam, but continuously restricts, contains, and despises Cuba, home also, like Venezuela, to many of our brethren who are descendants of the African Diaspora and Transatlantic Slave Trade. U.S. backed corporations and their neo-con front men persistently grade the landscape for the continuing rape and pillage of the natural resources of Africa and Latin America, with complete disregard for their populations. Our community needs independent and focused Black voices to reshape a U.S. foreign policy to at least partly reflect the beliefs, hearts, and minds of most Black Americans. The Bush-Cheney industrial war complex has cost American taxpayers upwards of $800 Billion for the Iraq War, and close to $620 Billion so far for the War in Afghanistan. Congress won’t even begin an appropriations bill that would award a tenth of those amounts to put our people to work rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Our community needs to take a page out of Chávez’ book, reclaim our man-and-woman- hood, and lay the groundwork for a new economic landscape that actually makes a return to our communities. Let us hope that ‘renewed and improved’ relationships with Venezuela is not just foreplay for renewed conjugal relations between U.S. neo-con corporate interests (‘Economic Hit Men’) and the Venezuelan elite, where only the poor and struggling workers are actually screwed. . . sound familiar? Rest in peace, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (WSSN 3/7/13)