Trayvon in Me: The Hate Crime of Black Masculinity

I went to Bloomington's Consciousness Raising Rally for Trayvon Martin in "celebration" of my successful dissertation proposal oral defense. I have always tried to draw a distinct line between my scholarship and whatever activist voice that I have. The events of Trayvon Martin, however, capture a timeless problem of intersectionality to which even standard progressive politics may be blind. The poem I presented, and its precedent, draw from the thesis that the hate-crime of Trayvon Martin bespeaks the fatalizing stigmas at the nexus of race and gender.



Today, Bloomington (IN) held a Consciousness Raising Rally for Trayvon Martin on the steps of Bloomington Courthouse Square, in the heart of the historic downtown district. Minutes after noon on a day forecasted with showers, well over 200 people with hoodies, signs, and voice gathered in solidarity and agitation, pouring in from every crevice of our city of barely seventy thousand. The mood was pensiveness, outrage, and resolve all boiled into a moment of awakening: The time for change is not tomorrow. The time for change is now. The two-hour rally was organized by Shani Equality Robin, Siobhan Carter-David, and the IUB Women of Color Leadership Institute. The voices of community leaders, students, and long-time residents were interspersed with honks for justice and spoken word performances. We marched around sidewalks twice and chanted "We Are, Trayvon Martin" and "Without Justice, There Is No Peace".



about 1:30pm, March 24, 2012
Bloomington Courthouse Square, steps caddy corner to Trojan Horse


Son. Brother. Male. Black Masculinity. I want to submit to you that this moment is not just about race or gender. It is about race and gender.


Because of where I come from, these words I deliver today I should not have. However, the cruelty of this moment is that it is normal. Transcendent. This moment is the blink of the eye that tears do not miss. Today, I submit a tear for Trayvon Martin. Why?


I am a child of immigrants, a born in the baptismal water Pentecostal, a basketball player turned nerd intellectual, a woman. At the age of 17, in the eve of Amadou Diallo’s murder, I came out. I am Trayvon Martin. This is not a uniform.


For those of us who have lived Trayvon, we know that there are an infinite number of moments in our own lives that connect to the tragedy of this moment. These moments bring together the idea of “hate” and “crime” in ways that legal statutes are unprepared to handle. This moment is about the stereotypes and stigmas of aggression, criminality, and otherness attached to race and gender. This moment is about the ways that race and gender come together in ways that transgress and traverse the physical boundaries of body. This moment is about the ways that the meanings attributed to bodies serve to confine the life expectancies, life chances, and life tragedies of people indelibly marked by the social reality of race and gender. This moment is about the haunting symbols we attach to bodies – this body, his body, these bodies of children, bodies of children carrying Skittles, iced teas, and cellphones, children running up cellphone minutes to loved ones, children walking from the convenience store, children carrying in their space the looming risks created by the symbols we attribute to their bodies, children defined by the approval to kill black masculine bodies. This moment is about the condemnatory nature of the risks and assumptions enveloped in the infinite number of moments when you and I match the description of Trayvon. This moment is about the inherent contradictions of this society's approval to seek death for the black masculine bodies outlined by Trayvon's.


The absence of a solution for the injustice of Trayvon’s “hate-crime” rests upon us both odd and fitting. A child is dead. We are victims of a crime for which no perpetrator is responsible. We are victims of a crime where there are only guns, bullets, and deaths. We are victims of a crime where there are no murderers, only shooters.


Today, I speak to you from a specific moment among the infinites of my life. I speak to you of a moment crowded with youth, fear, and fatalism – as someone who came of age in the wakes of the death of Amadou Diallo. Diallo was another timeless victim of security brutality. At the ripe age of 23 in 1999, Diallo, a Liberian immigrant, was shot at 41 times by plain-clothed police in the Bronx. In 2001, the year I turned 18, the murderers of Amadou were acquitted.


Amadou, like Trayvon, was killed unarmed. Amadou, like Trayvon, was pursued by security forces who suspected him to be a criminal. Amadou, like Trayvon, reached in his pocket at the wrong time. Amadou, like Trayvon, was innocent. Amadou, like Trayvon, bore the penalty of his blackness. Amadou, like Trayvon, was remembered.


This poem I bring to you today was written in the wake of the acquittal of Amadou’s 4 killers. The perspective is from a person who found herself matching the description of Amadou-now-Trayvon. I’ll concede that Florida may be too hot for hoodies. Still, there are some basic elements of the description that are timeless – pants, shirt, misconceived swag, dark skin.


To Amadou and Trayvon, I dedicate a poem I first wrote in my freshman year as an undergraduate at the University of Florida, “In Gainesville”. In Gainesville. In the Bronx, the West Side of Chicago, the South Side of Atlanta, the Inner City of Detroit, the Beaches of Miami. In Gainesville, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando. In Sanford. On every street and street corner of America. In Bloomington, Indiana.



In Gainesville,

on my bike at night,
I push third gear
to fifth gear,
then to sixth
as I hear
the thump of feet behind me.
My heart beats
like a pack of chased deer,
legs pedal faster,
push me further
from the archer with a bow
and a body that can shoot
white arrows
in me

in Gainesville,

I get bullets for the 33 Magnum gun
I bought to protect me
from all the strong bodies
that do not like my black skin
only partly hidden
by my baggy jeans
or the rainbow pussy
covered full
by white cotton panties

in Gainesville,

I pedal faster
because I do not want
to be stained shirts,
or hand-printed faces,
or on the cement
screaming
thinking
I must be asking
for it

in Gainesville,

I yearn for warm skin,
as I do blue skies,
but silver knives be slashing
the skins of butch bodies –
movie reels,
eternal,
replaying.
Silver knives
and gun-cocked hands
incite mid-dream jolts
from pools of sweat
at six
in the morning

in Gainesville,

where it is not ok
to be black
and successful
unless you like being
a painted white token
or a dog
housebroken,
where it is not ok
to be gay and open
for your fear knows
tomorrow
a flyer will be chanting,
no,
screaming
for your death

in Gainesville,

where I still awake
in tears of fear
of being chased,
haunted by the taunts of hatred
from drunken party boys
and hairy potbelly men,
where vigil prayers be pleads
to God
for change
in all the country towns,
big, small, and medium-sized cities,
suburbs and gated communities,
where I am scared
of bike rides,
long walks,
grocery runs
after, before, and during the sun sets,
like I am

in Gainesville.

Comments

@bLaKtivist said…
Still brilliant and insightful Abigail. Thank you for sharing this with me.

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