Black Skin, White Jurors: Fanon, Juror B37, and Not Getting It

From Slate - Zimmerman trial juror B37: Why did prosecutors let her on the Travyon Martin jury?:

Start with the general observations already raised in Gawker: B37 consumes no media beyond the Today show—no radio, no Internet news, and no newspapers used for anything but lining her parrot's cage. Perhaps because she does not consume any media, she was under the false belief that there were “riots” after the Martin shooting. She also described the Martin killing as "an unfortunate incident that happened."

In my previous post on this case I chose to focus on the issue of guns rather than of race, but upon hearing the revelations of the views of "Juror B37," of someone who believes that "everything is a lie," and thus "doesn’t care enough to learn that the riots she believes to have happened did not," I could not help but be reminded of Frantz Fanon's studies of the relationship between White colonizers and the Black colonized.  As Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Masks:

It is of course obvious that the Malagasy can perfectly well tolerate the fact of not being a white man.  A Malagasy is a Malagasy; or, rather, no, not he is a Malagasy but, rather, in an absolute sense he "lives" his Malagasyhood.  If he is a Malagasy, it is because the white man has come, and if at a certain stage he has been led to ask himself whether he is indeed a man, it is because his reality as a man has been challenged.  In other words, I begin to suffer from not being a white man to the degree that the white man imposes discrimination on me, makes me a colonized native, robs me of all worth, all individuality, tells me that I am a parasite on the world, that I must bring myself as quickly as possible into step with the white world, "that I am a brute beast, that my people and I are like a walking dung-heap that disgustingly fertilizes sweet sugar cane and silky cotton, that I have no use in the world."  Then I will quite simply try to make myself white: that is, I will compel the white man to acknowledge that I am human. (Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), page 98)

As Fanon is trying to elucidate, following Sartre who is in turn following Hegel, one becomes who one "is" through not merely the eyes of the other, but through simply the existence of the other.  The Malagasy is not "a Malagasy" until a European "white man has come."  Before then, the Malagasy man is simply a man who does not think of himself in terms of "his Malagasyhood."  I become an "is" therefore only when my "reality as a man has been challenged."

This then raises the question of whether the astounding disconnect from reality of Juror B37—much like the astounding ignorance of Zimmerman's lawyer, who claimed that there not only would have been no difference had Travyon Martin been white and Zimmerman black but that Zimmerman then "never would have been charged with a crime"—is not then a form of "white privilege."  In other words, not having had one's reality challenged in the way of the Malagasy by the European, or Travyon Martin by George Zimmerman, or countless minorities by members of majorities, allows one the comfort of being a denier of truths that these others do not merely believe but live everyday.

We could all learn a lot from
South Park's Stan and Token

In many ways this was explored most deftly by the recent South Park episode "With apologies to Jesse Jackson." Stan's dad goes from believing the N-word to be the right answer on Wheel of Fortune to joining a group of fellow white men who had become alienated by publicly using the N-word (insert Paula Deen joke here).  In turn, Stan tries desperately to apologize to Token (whose name is itself a perfect encapsulation of portrayals of race in pop culture) by repeatedly telling Token that he "gets" what's upsetting him but Token keeps rejecting his apologies.  Stan and Token are only able to reconcile upon this closing exchange:

Stan:	Don't you see, Kyle?? I don't get it! [smiles, then walks up to Token] Token, I get it now. I don't get it. I've been trying to say that I understand how you feel, but, I'll never understand. I'll never really get how it feels for a black person to have somebody use the N word. I don't get it.
Token:	Now you get it, Stan. [smiles]
Stan:	[smiles] Yeah. I totally don't get it.
Token:	Thanks, dude.

Imagine how differently the trial might have gone if Juror B37 had similarly been able to realize "I totally don't get it."  What's worse, imagine how differently the Zimmerman-Martin confrontation might have gone if Zimmerman had sooner been able to come to such a realization too...

Enhancement, Responsibility, and "Tragedy"

Tyson Gay (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From BBC Sports - Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell: A tragedy for athletics - Neil Black:

"It just triggers you off to think if it is possible to be even more diligent in our awareness, if it is possible for us to remind athletes of their responsibility and accountability for all these things, to make sure they are looking at every aspect of what they do, what they take, when they take it, why they take it. Check, check, check, check, check.

"When in doubt, don't take it."

This argument is remarkably similar to that of Jeff McMahan's in his recent Killing in War, wherein McMahan argues that it is the responsibility of any potential combatant to ensure that his side is just before becoming a combatant, and, when in doubt, don't join up.

Such an argument sounds entirely plausible.  Surely if I am to put anything in body, or, more importantly, put myself in a position where I am a danger to others, it is on me to guarantee that what I am doing is right rather than to plead ignorance as Gay and Powell have thus far done.

What is meant in both these cases by "responsibility"?  Is it right to assume, as these arguments do, that responsibility is simply to be understood on the model of "accountability"?  To ignore the larger structures in which these decisions to enhance oneself are being made—through PEDs on the one hand and through weapons on the other—is to suggest that I am always perfectly aware and in control of my actions independently of any mediating factors such as what could be called the "culture of sports" or the "culture of war."

Cheating is a part of sports, a part that extends from athletes and coaches down to fans and non-fans.  When a baseball player (I'm a Red Sox fan, so of course I'm thinking of Derek Jeter here) pretends to have tagged out a player trying to steal 2nd base, even though he knows that no such tag was made, we do not cry "Cheater!" but instead laugh along with him and congratulate him on "giving it a shot."  Such theatricality has become so engrained in sports that South Park recently did an entire episode suggesting that World Wrestling Entertainment had filled the void left by our modern-day disinterest in opera.  If athletes are not making ESPN-worthy highlights—whether those highlights are of plays within the rules of the sport are not—we lose interest.  We do not merely expect athletes to cheat, we demand it.  What we further demand though is that they not get caught.  Getting caught reveals our hypocrisy, and that we will not stand for (think similarly of the disparity between our claimed abhorrence of government-approved torture and the success of 24).

Go read it (again)...

Similarly, in a time of war we expect potential combatants to join up, to not question the reason for engagement but to be patriotic and to serve when called upon. This struggle, as Cheyney Ryan rightly pointed out in his contribution to Just and Unjust Warriors, is not between a commitment to morality and a commitment to patriotism however, but is rather a struggle between two moral commitments.  And, as Tim O'Brien beautifully portrayed in his famous The Things They Carried, this struggle can be seen to operate an even deeper level, at a level that I would describe as existential.  This is a struggle then between who we are and who we want to be, between how we want to be seen by others and how we want to see ourselves.

So before we get on our high horses and cry foul (or, worse yet, declare it a "tragedy") that Gay and Powell cheated, or accuse young men and women of immorality or ignorance for signing up for wars we disagree with, we should take a step back and ask why these decisions were made rather than hypocritically and naïvely telling them what they should have done differently.