Part of the challenge of this moment is coming up with new frameworks of racial recognition. There is a real disconnect between what white people know and what black people know in this country. Philosophers and political theorists understand these as questions of “epistemology,” wherein they consider how social conditions shape our particular standpoint, and ability to apprehend the things that are supposed to be apparent to us. Because Darren Wilson did not use a racial slur to refer to Michael Brown, our current racial frameworks are inadequate for helping your average all-American white people think through the contours of this encounter. That problem has plagued us since the beginning of this case; it dogged us throughout the Zimmerman trial, and it is helped along by the deep emotional dishonesty that characterizes race relations in the country. [T]o believe that Brown charged at Wilson in the midst of a hail of gunfire is to believe that black people are monsters, mythical superhuman creatures, who do not understand the physics of bullets, even as they rip through flesh. To white people, who co-sign Wilson’s account of events, this seems like an entirely reasonable assertion, one helped along by a lifetime of media consumption that represents black masculinity as magical, monstrous and mythic. Whether we consider the deliberate incorrect instructions given to jurors by the prosecutor, or the refusal to challenge the incendiary and inhumane characterizations of Michael Brown as “it,” “demon” and “hulk,” black people know that a lie has been perpetrated. Michael Brown was a human being to us, and more than that, a kid. Like Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old shot in Cleveland for playing with a toy gun, black children are frequently perceived as being much older than they are. The police believed Tamir to be 20 and not 12. That inability to see black people as human, as vulnerable, as children, as people worthy of protecting is an epistemology problem, a framework problem, a problem about how our experiences shape what we are and are not able to know. The limitations of our frameworks are helped along by willful ignorance and withholding of empathy.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 11:12:31 +0000
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