- Good evening.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- Before they finish filing out the door,
let's just thank one more time,
the First Presbyterian
Church of Brooklyn Choir.
(audience applauding)
What a beautiful way to
start this special occasion.
Welcome to the 23rd Annual
Derrick Bell Lecture
on Race in American Society.
I'm Trevor Morrison, I'm
the Dean of this law school.
I'm very proud to be that every
day, but especially today,
when we remember Derrick,
and celebrate Derrick
through this annual lecture.
This lecture is among the
most important annual events
at the law school, eagerly
awaited by all of us,
and we are delighted this
evening to see members
of Derrick's family and friends here.
We're joined by his widow, Dr. Janet Bell,
and sons, Douglas, Carter,
and Derrick Bell the Third, welcome.
(audience applauding)
I've remarked in past years,
that I didn't have the privilege
of knowing Derrick personally,
or being his colleague.
He passed before I
joined the faculty here,
but I feel that I know him,
and I feel that we work together,
because his influence on this institution,
on legal education and higher
education, on American law,
and society is tangible,
everywhere present
and certainly in the
halls of this law school.
He was, as we all know,
a tremendous figure
in constitutional and civil rights law,
in civil rights more broadly,
in racial justice, and
indeed justice, more broadly.
His leadership and the model
that he sets for all of us
as a scholar, and a teacher,
and as an activist leader,
truly is something that
we celebrate and cherish
here at the law school.
We are grateful that Derrick,
after a transformational
career in so many places,
whether it be the Justice Department,
the NAACP Legal Defense
and Education Fund,
Harvard Law School, that
he ultimately chose NYU Law
as his final academic home,
where he was broadly admired
by his colleagues, and by administrators,
and of course students.
In 2012, he posthumously
received the law school's
Podell Distinguished Teaching Award,
which is our highest teaching
award, here at the law school.
And tonight as I say,
we gather to celebrate
and to carry his
extraordinary legacy forward
to continue to enhance and expand his work
for racial reform and
justice in the United States.
And the mission of this
lecture series is exactly that,
to examine the role of
race in American society,
and the role that law can
play in achieving justice,
and the role, sometimes,
that law has played
in holding it back.
It has served as an important
platform for leading scholars
and activists to share
their work and insights
on racial justice and civil rights,
and we are thrilled that this year,
we are welcoming Dean
Angela Onwuachi-Willig,
the Dean of Boston
University School of Law,
to present her lecture,
The Tragedies of Emmett
Till and Trayvon Martin,
Illustrating Professor
Derrick Bell's Lesson
on how Racial Patterns Adapt in Ways
That Maintain White Dominance.
Angela will be introduced
formally in just a moment
by Vincent Southerland, the
Executive Director of our Center
on Race, Inequality, and the Law.
We are thrilled with
the work of this center,
which launched two
academic years ago, now,
and is among other things,
the home of the Bell Lecture
Series, and in many ways,
it expands and builds
upon Derrick's own legacy
in scholarship and activist leadership.
But before we have the lecture,
we're going to hear first,
from Dr. Janet Bell, herself.
She has been an integral
member, really a leader,
of the NYU Law community for many years,
and in fact, as you may know,
the Bell Lecture was
conceived of by Janet,
as a gift for Derrick's 65th birthday.
It's not surprising
that she would think up
such a compelling event,
given her own professional
and personal commitment to
education and to communication.
Janet is a wonderful
friend of this law school,
and to me, and we're thrilled
to have her with us tonight.
Without further ado, Dr. Janet Bell.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you and good evening.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- Dean Morrison has been
such a wonderful successor
to a number of wonderful
dean's at this school,
and it's always a thrill to see him,
and it's always wonderful that he supports
this lecture very
enthusiastically every year.
Thank you for that.
I'm tryin' to move this
mic down just a little bit,
'cause Dean Morrison is a
couple inches taller than I am,
without dropping it, so
bear with me a second.
Derrick loved and lived to teach,
and teaching kept him alive.
For him it was always students first,
it was a mantra in our household.
In that universal encyclopedia in the sky,
his portrait is the definition of mentor.
For him there was no higher
calling than teacher.
It is always gratifying
and humbling that students
who are not his students,
Derrick died seven years
ago this past October,
but many students here now,
consider themselves his students.
They continue his work with
integrity and dedication.
I too, want to acknowledge
the three Bell sons,
Derrick Bell the Third,
Douglass Dubois Bell,
and Carter Robeson Bell.
There is significance in those names.
(audience laughing)
Carter is the family wit,
and often says he has three last names.
Carter being in honor
of Derrick's mentors,
Robert L. Carter and
his wife Gloria Carter.
The late Judge Carter argued
the first Brown v. Board of Education Case
before the Supreme Court, and
taught at this law school.
Derrick's other mentor, by the way,
was the late civil rights
attorney and judge,
Constance Baker Motley.
I especially and always
want to lift up the memory
of Derrick's first wife,
a phenomenal woman,
Jewel Hairston Bell, who died
before Derrick and I met.
She left a great legacy
and a great responsibility
to carry on her work.
As partners, she and
Derrick set the standard.
Now 20 years ago, over 20
years ago, 23 to be precise,
the Bell Lecture and co-founders
shared a dream with me.
It was not just me, it included
Judge Robert L. Carter,
Paulette Jones Robinson,
and Valerie Cavanaugh,
and Bill Kerstetter, William Kerstetter,
who are here tonight.
They always fly all the way
from California for the Bell Lecture.
Where are you guys?
Don't be shy.
(audience applauding)
Also included in our village
is the international lawyer, Alice Young,
one of Derrick's first
students at Harvard Law.
She, along with Charles Ogletree,
helped endow this series,
also, Lisa Marie Boykin,
class of 95 of NYU Law School,
with recent assists from
Dr. Kitty Muldoon Steel
and Lewis Steel, as well
as Ted and Nina Wells.
I always want to thank them,
and Kitty I know you're not shy.
(audience laughing)
And deep personal thanks
to the former dean,
and former university
President John Sexton,
who was a Bell student at Harvard,
who championed this lecture
series from the beginning,
and to his successor, Ricky Revesz.
With thanks too, to the Law
Alumni of Color Association
and its President, Rafiq Kalam Id-Din.
Now these things don't
just happen by themselves,
so I'd like to give
special thanks to the staff
of the Office of Development
and Alumni Relations
for their care and their
attention to this lecture series,
with special acknowledgement
to Kelly Spencer,
for always going above and
beyond the call of duty.
So, on behalf of the Bell extended family,
I again pledge our continued support
to this fine law school,
represented in part
by this lecture series,
and the courtyard bench
with a plaque in Derrick's honor.
That bench, by the way,
which is out front,
you students, please go out
there and contemplate ways
that you can help save
our fragile democracy.
And of course I get a kick every year,
(audience applauding)
thank you,
in introducing one of the
most humble and shy people
outside of the classroom
and the courtroom, I know,
and that is the Vice-Dean Randy Hertz.
He's the faculty liaison
for the Bell Lecture Series,
since Derrick's passing.
Students love Randy, as do I,
As with Derrick, Randy
Hertz is student focused,
I say, student obsessed.
He is also a true gentleman and a scholar.
I'd like to acknowledge someone else
who's in this room tonight,
a former Bell Scholar,
and that is William Chip Carter
of the University of
Pittsburgh, who at that time,
was the Dean of the
University of Pittsburgh,
who spoke a few years ago.
Thank you for coming,
and he comes all the time
to support this series.
The University of
Pittsburgh is where Derrick
earned his law degree in 1957,
where he was on Law Review of course.
(audience laughing)
So, it's my pleasure to introduce,
someone who needs no
introduction to this law school,
but to those of you who
are part of this community,
and part of our extended family,
let me tell you a little bit
about Anthony Tony Thompson.
He is a great professor, great scholar.
He's also the founding faculty director
for the New York University Center
on Race, Inequality, and the Law,
and they've been slammin'
for the last couple years.
He is a renowned
professor of clinical law.
He teaches courses related to
criminal law and litigation.
His scholarship focuses
on race, offender reentry,
criminal justice issues, and leadership.
His book, Releasing Prisoners,
Redeeming Communities,
is an in-depth look at
the issues of poverty,
reentry, race, politics, and media.
His teaching awards at NYU
include the Podell
Distinguished Teaching Award
and the University's
Distinguished Teaching Award.
He also received the
EL Award from El Diario
for his community service.
Now, the reason we started with music,
most of you know, Derrick loved music,
and almost every Bell event has music.
I'm so grateful that an
ensemble from our church choir,
First Presbyterian Church
of Brooklyn Heights,
(audience laughing)
was able to join us tonight.
They also sang at
Derrick's memorial service,
so they are very close to our heart.
The Minister of Music is Amy Neuner,
(audience applauding)
and Derrick used to say,
"For a little person,
"she has such big
energy", and that is true.
Now, every year we sing
Happy Birthday to Derrick,
because it's also a celebration,
even though we deal with weighty issues,
but as the music buoy's us,
and as culture moves us forward
to fight the battles ahead,
we must embrace music.
And so, but every year, some
of you do not get the memo,
that we're doing the
Stevie Wonder version,
(audience laughing)
of Happy Birthday.
So, I'm gonna ask Stephanie
Seymour from the choir.
- [Stephanie] No, I can't.
- First Presbyterian Church,
to come on up and help me sing this song
because tonight is more than a lecture.
It is a celebration of
Derrick Bell's exemplary life
of meaning and worth.
And so, in recognition of that,
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday, happy
birthday, happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday, happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
(audience cheering and clapping)
- Good evening,
- Good evening.
- That's a tough act to follow.
(audience laughing)
Derrick was my mentor, my
friend, and my colleague.
I learned a lot from him,
and his writings about the permanence
of racism in American culture,
was less a pessimistic tone,
but rather a railing against bigotry,
racism, and white supremacy.
But, Derrick in fact,
was a man of great hope,
great passion, and great faith.
One of the things that I
learned in his passing,
I taught his classes in that last year,
was that with his Fellows,
his teaching assistants,
and the legion of people he
launched into legal education,
Derrick had a profound respect for women.
And in fact, looking down
on us from heaven today,
he would look at Professor Melissa Murray
and Professor Deborah Archer
as wonderful additions to this community.
(audience applauding)
Not to mention, the awesome new Dean
at Boston University School of Law.
(audience cheering and clapping)
But Derrick being Derrick, would say,
there's still work to do.
What about the Latinx professors?
What about the Asian professors?
What about the young men of color?
We still have work to do.
In my own work on leadership,
I've learned that putting together
an important leadership team,
requires you to think hard
and get strong people.
In this last two years,
the Center on Race,
Inequality, and the Law,
has made its mark.
We've been active
in the national criminal
justice reform landscape.
We've taken a unique position
in the positions of race and technology
and our convenings have
brought people together
to foster critical
conversations nationally.
All that is due in large part to my team,
our esteemed Fellow, Sarah Hamilton,
our wonderful student
Fellows and volunteers,
but perhaps, most importantly
the spine of the center,
Vincent Southerland.
I've known Vincent for a very long time.
He cut his teeth as a public defender,
looking at the effects of
the criminal justice system
on our nation, our communities,
and our young people.
He took those skills to the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund
and became one of the premier
civil rights litigators in the nation.
I've had a chance to see him grow
and in the last year,
watch him in the classroom.
He's been amazing, and I've
seen that he's as great
in the classroom as he
is in the courtroom.
He's had an opportunity
to inspire, to teach,
and to challenge our young
people, our law students here.
So, I am quite pleased to
introduce the Executive Director
of the Center of Race, Inequality,
and the Law, Vincent Southerland.
(audience applauding)
- Good evening.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- And thank you so much for
that warm introduction Tony.
I have the distinct honor of
introducing tonight's lecturer,
Angela Onwuachi-Willig.
As is typical of her
brilliant scholarship,
the title of her lecture,
The Tragedies of Emmet
Till and Trayvon Martin,
Illustrating Professor Bell's
Lesson on how Racial Patterns
Adapt in Ways That
Maintain White Dominance,
pulls together American
history, contemporary events,
critical race theory, and the law.
It's so very helpful in times like these
to hear from someone who
can help us make sense
of the world around us, in
all its racialized complexity.
Her lecture promises to be
both dynamic and enlightening,
and I can not wait to hear it,
but before we get there,
please allow me to tell you
a little bit about our esteemed guest.
She was born and raised in Houston, Texas.
The same Houston, Texas, by the way,
that just elected 19
Black women to the bench.
(audience cheering and clapping)
She previously served as a
Chancellor Professor of Law
at the University of California Berkeley.
Before that she served
as a Professor of Law
at the University of Iowa College of Law
for nearly a decade, and as
an Assistant Professor of Law
at the University of California Davis.
Those positions were preceded
by a pair of federal clerk-ships,
and time spent as a labor
and employment lawyer.
In August of 2018,
Angela, to great fanfare,
assumed her current position
as the Dean of Boston
University School of Law.
Angela's ascension to her current position
as the Dean of top flight law school
is the latest accomplishment
in a legal career
overflowing with
phenomenal accomplishments.
She's recognized nationally
as a top-notch legal scholar,
and an expert in civil rights, race,
gender, inequality, and
critical race theory.
Her scholarship is
nothing short of profound.
It speaks to the things that truly matter.
The things that students don't often get
to focus on in law school,
the people in the footnotes,
and at the margins, whose
experiences, whose lives,
whose race, whose gender, whose class,
shape the outcomes of the
cases that comprise the law.
Her scholarship is also
prolific, and I mean prolific.
(woman laughing)
She's published extensively
in the most respected
law journals and publications nationwide.
In fact, if you take a look at her CV,
the portion of her CV that lists
all her academic publications,
and all her conference appearances,
and all of the other contributions
she made to scholarship,
it is long enough to meet the requirements
for a nice law review article itself.
(audience laughing)
In all seriousness, Angela
is an intellectual force
of nature, and while all
of that is well and good,
the reality is that she brings
so much more to the table
than her incomparable intellect.
The truth is that she's
an inspiration to others.
She's a mentor, an absolutely
exceptional leader,
and someone who has dedicated her career
to shaping the minds of
those who will define the law
and the legal profession
for generations to come.
Her outstanding teaching
and her service to students
has been recognized time and
again, and award after award,
at every institution that
she has been a part of.
She's been especially
invaluable in championing
the diversity in the Academy,
and serving on and chairing
national committees to
develop the best practices
for recruitment and retention
of law teachers of color.
Melissa Murray, who I'm proud to say,
joined the faculty here,
is a first-hand witness to Angela's gifts.
See, Melissa was on her way to Berkeley,
and excited to have Angela as a colleague,
but unfortunately when Melissa arrived,
Angela left promptly for Iowa.
Fortunately for Melissa,
Angela founded the
Lutie Little Black Women
Law Faculty Workshop, which
has produced countless articles
and books, and has assisted
dozens and dozens of women
on the path to tenure.
Melissa took advantage of that workshop
and attended it in Iowa,
and she shared with me
that there was very little at
the time that could get her
to come to Iowa, but Angela
was there, and so she went.
In my book, that speaks volumes
about Angela's influence.
But, what's incredibly special to me
is even with all that influence,
all those professional accomplishments,
whether it's prestigious awards,
or wonderful publications,
or even being named a finalist
for the Iowa Supreme Court,
all of that's accompanied
by an unparalleled level
of humility and kindness,
that make her the paradigm
for those in the Academy
and the legal profession,
students and teachers
alike, to learn from.
It's also not lost on me,
how profound and how wonderful it is
to see where she is today
and how hard it was for her to get there.
In another time, 30 years
ago, about 30 years ago,
at another law school in the
Boston metropolitan area,
Derrick Bell, took an
unpaid leave of absence
from a prestigious institution,
until it hired tenured women
of color on his faculty.
As you can imagine,
it was a stance that was
not popular at the time.
It was fraught with controversy.
It was one that jeopardized his career.
That school refused to
change its ways at the time,
which happily for us,
brought Professor Bell
to this institution.
Their loss, our gain.
But I like to think that
the other significant part
of Derrick's sacrifice,
his courageous choice,
was to contribute in some small measure
to the success of incredibly talented,
brilliant women of color,
like Angela, who continue
to thrive at institutions
and in the legal profession, nationwide.
I can't imagine how proud
he must be of you tonight.
It's such a great honor to welcome you
as you add another chapter
to an incredibly storied legal career,
by delivering this years
Derrick Bell Lecture.
Please join me in welcoming
Angela Onwuachi-Willig.
(audience clapping)
- Wow, well I wanna thank
you for that incredibly warm
and kind introduction, thank you so much.
I also wanna start by
thanking Dr. Janet Dewart Bell
for granting me this
enormous honor of giving
the 23rd Annual Derrick Bell Lecture
on Race in American Society.
And like the late Professor
Bell, Dr. Dewart Bell,
particularly through her new book,
Lighting the Fires of Freedom,
African American Women in
the Civil Rights Movement.
(audience cheering and clapping)
Dr. Dewart Bell has been a
model for me in my own research
and scholarship, showing
me why it is so important
for those of us with a voice
in academic and public circles
to use our voices to
amplify the lives, the work,
the challenges, and
the sacrifices of those
who are too often overlooked
and undervalued in our society.
And I wanna thank Dr. Bell
for continuing to be a model
and an inspiration for
me and for so many others
in the struggle for equality and justice.
I also wanna thank
Professor Bell's children,
Carter, Douglas, and Derrick the Third,
for joining us in this
event to honor their father.
In particular, I wanna thank you
for sharing your father
with us throughout his life.
We are so, so grateful for
all that he has done for me,
for countless professors, and
I'm gonna talk a little bit
about what Professor Bell did for me.
Additionally, I wanna
thank NYU School of Law
for providing a forum, through
which the work and the legacy
of Professor Bell can be honored
and remembered each year,
and just as important for
working with Dr. Dewart Bell
to begin this tradition
during Derrick Bell's life,
so that he had the
opportunity to see and hear
in a formal setting the great impact
of his life and his work.
And I wanna thank Professor Tony Thompson,
and Vince Southerland, and Sarah Hamilton
from the Center on Race,
Inequality and the Law
for their work on this wonderful event.
I am grateful for everything
that you have done.
And I wanna thank Dean Morrison
for giving me this opportunity
to honor one of my heroes.
And finally, I wanna thank Kelly Spencer,
Associate Director of
Alumni Relations at NYU Law
for all of her hard work in
making this program a reality,
and in making my presence here possible.
And of course, I wanna thank
all of you for being here
for this very special event.
As I said earlier, I'm
tremendously honored
by this opportunity to give
the Derrick Bell Lecture.
One of the greatest
achievements of my life
was receiving the AALS
Minority Group Section
Derrick A. Bell Award, as
a junior faculty member.
I felt, and I feel so
honored by these connections
to Professor Bell, not
only because of the path
that he blazed and opened for all of us,
as one of the first
African American professors
at a majority school in the Legal Academy,
and as the first tenured
African American professor
at Harvard Law School, but also
because of the pivotal role
that he played in my life,
both before I personally knew him
and after I had the
pleasure of meeting him.
Were it not for Professor Bell,
I would not be standing
here before you as a lawyer
and a law professor.
In 1994, before I even
personally laid eyes
on Professor Bell, he through his work,
convinced me to remain in law school.
Although I arrived at law
school during the second,
and arguably the third generation
of critical race theory,
or the CRT scholarly movement,
I had no idea what that
scholarly field was at that time.
And to be honest, I had no real idea
what it meant to be a lawyer.
All I knew is that I wanted
to learn about the law
to use it as a tool for
combating the injustices
I had both seen and read about in my life.
Immediately before my
first year of law school,
I attended an orientation
program at my law school,
the University of Michigan,
and that program was geared
towards students of color
and other under-represented
students in the law,
and during this program I
expected to find students
who shared my same passions.
But while there were some
students who shared my concerns
and passions, the
majority of them did not,
and I began to feel alienated.
In fact, I felt somewhat alone,
and naively I wondered, well,
if even the students of color
are not as concerned about justice
and social change as I am,
is law school really the place for me?
Was there a place for me in the law?
And I began to wonder if
I should leave law school.
Luckily during that same program,
I had the pleasure of
meeting a group of 2Ls
who were part of a CRT reading group,
and they introduced my
classmates and me to CRT,
starting with Professor Bell's
seminal piece, Space Traders,
a fictional story about
the process by which
the US government
ultimately decided to accept
an offer from aliens to trade all Blacks
in return for gold, to bail
out the almost bankrupt
federal state and local governments,
special chemicals capable of
un-polluting the environment,
and a totally safe
nuclear engine and fuel,
to relieve our nation's
all but depleted supply of fossil fuel.
So prescient, right?
The story Space Traders
captured my attention
like nothing else that week.
It spoke to my experiences
as a Black Southern woman
from an economically
disadvantaged background
in the United States, and
it helped to fill the void
of silence about race that
had seemed to be far to wide
in this program, and frankly
throughout much of law school.
It was only after reading Space Traders
that I became certain,
there was a place in the
legal profession for me.
I distinctly remember thinking,
that if a tenured law professor from then,
Harvard Law School,
could right this story,
there must be a place in the law for me.
And ultimately, that CRT reading group
led my classmates and me to form
the Michigan Journal of Race
and Law, the very next year,
and since then, six of us
from this founding group
have become law professors,
all engaged in scholarship
about race and law.
As a professor, each time time I taught
my critical race theory course,
I always assigned Space
Traders as the first reading,
sharing with my students
the personal importance
of the piece to me, as well as the ways
in which it challenged traditional notions
about what legal scholarship
must look and read like.
And every year, Space
Traders is one of my students
favorite readings, the
story simply never got old,
and while there was always
disagreement and debate
about whether our nation would ever accept
a trade from aliens if presented,
the majority of students in each course
agreed with Professor Bell.
Meaning, they always believed
that the United States,
would in fact trade all
of its African Americans
for these treasures, and they did so,
even after we had elected
the nation's first Black
President, Barack Obama.
And of course, Professor
Bell was incredibly generous
when I actually became a professor.
When I was a junior faculty member,
I would send many of my drafts to him
and he always read them,
sending back lots of really
amazing and incredible comments
that enriched my work.
And it was through the Michigan
Journal of Race and Law
that I first met Professor Bell.
Professor Bell was always
so gracious in supporting
the efforts of law students
and aspiring attorneys.
So, it should come as no
surprise that he was kind enough
to support the effort of
students who were looking
to provide yet another space
for race scholarship in legal academia.
He did so, by agreeing to be
the opening keynote speaker
for the first symposium
for the Michigan Journal
of Race and Law, and lucky
for me, I had the privilege
of being Professor Bell's
host during his entire stay.
I learned much from him
during those couple of days,
and he was of course,
encouraging of my goal then
of becoming a law professor.
And once Professor Bell returned to NYU,
he kindly sent me a
handwritten note to thank me
for serving as his host,
and to offer me additional encouragement
about my goal of becoming a law professor.
I was floored when I received it.
I could not believe that
the superstar scholar
had taken even a minute to
draft a thank you note to me,
but that was Professor Bell, brilliant,
and highly accomplished,
but also generous,
humble, and down to earth.
But what I remember most from that moment
in hosting Professor Bell,
is how he took one example
from everyday life, both his and mine,
to impart a lesson
about racism to students
at our inaugural symposium.
The morning before Professor Bell was set
to give his opening keynote address,
I went to his hotel to pick him up
and bring him to the law school.
I parked and then met
Professor Bell in the lobby,
and we proceeded to the front desk,
so he could check out of the hotel.
Working at the front desk,
was a white woman who looked
to be in her 30's or so,
and ahead of us was a
customer who was also white,
whom she called up to the desk,
so she could check him out of the hotel.
Professor Bell and I should
have been the next people
in line to receive
service, but we did not.
Instead, before the
hotel guest ahead of us
had finished checking out that guest,
another guest, also white,
came up and stood to
the side, ahead of us.
I thought this customer's
move was a bold one,
but I was certain that
the woman who was working
at the front desk would wave
us over for service first.
After all, she had seen
us behind the customer
she was helping at the time,
and had to know that we
were there before the man
who was trying to cut us in
line, or perhaps even sadder,
the man who had rendered us invisible,
and did not even realize that
he was cutting us in line.
Instead, when the young woman
finished helping the first customer,
she made a gesture asking
the line-cutting man
to come forward to the front desk.
I was upset by her action,
but I would have forgiven her for it,
perhaps even convincing myself
that she had not actually seen us,
if she had not later
waved over a white couple
who had literally just arrived downstairs,
right after she finished
assisting the line-cutter.
In my youth, I was ready to
tell the woman about herself.
(audience laughing) And
I was ready to do so,
not because I was surprised
to be encountering racism,
but rather because she was
disrespecting one of my heroes.
I expressed my anger to Professor Bell,
indicating my intent to call
the hotel employee on her racism,
but Professor Bell calmly
told me to let it go,
and when she finally waved us over,
because there was no one else for her
to use to avoid serving us,
Professor Bell, of course,
was kind and respectful to her.
We checked out and then
headed to the law school.
In the car, I apologized
for the poor welcome
that Professor Bell had received
in my law school hometown,
and Professor Bell, again
told me not to worry,
even expressing an
understanding of the forces
that may lead someone
in that woman's position
to engage in such obvious
disrespect and racism towards us,
and I thought that was
the end of the story.
But when Professor Bell took
the podium to give his lecture,
he eloquently recounted the indignities
that he and I'd
experienced in the morning,
and used them to offer a lesson
to illustrate his point about racism,
its permanence, and its
adaptations over time.
This initial lesson that Professor Bell
offered in his lecture was one
that he had previously written about
in his seminal book,
Faces at the Bottom of the Well, in 1992.
He so poignantly wrote, quote,
"Black people will never gain
full equality in this country.
"Even those Herculean
efforts we held successful,
"will produce no more than
temporary peace or progress.
"Short lived victories
that slide into irrelevance
"as racial patterns adapt in ways
"that maintain white dominance."
And later in his article, The
Racism is a Permanent Thesis,
Courageous Revelation
or Unconscious Denial
of Racial Genocide, Professor
Bell provided a summary
of his arguments from Faces
at the Bottom of the Well,
explaining that racism is a
quote, "Critically important
"stabilizing force that
enables whites to bind
"across a wide socio-economic
chasm", end quote.
And today, here we are in 2018,
with racism continuing to adapt
and evolve despite peaks in progress,
like the election of our
first Black President,
and here we are near the end of 2018,
watching with fear from the sidelines
as our leaders, including
our Commander in Chief,
employ racism as an
important stabilizing force
that enables white to bind
across the wide socio-economic chasm.
So, today in my talk,
the Tragedies of Emmett
Till and Trayvon Martin,
Illustrating Professor
Derrick Bell's Lesson
on how Racial Patterns Adapt in Ways
That Maintain White Dominance,
I used two case studies,
one from the pre-civil rights era, 1955,
and one from the post-civil
rights era, in 2012 and 2013,
to demonstrate how old
racial patterns can,
and have merely adapted to
newer, more subtle patterns
that work to maintain white dominance.
Today, far too many people argue
that racism is a thing of the past,
and as proof racism's disappearance,
these individuals point to
formal equality in the form
of laws on the books that prohibit
explicit discrimination
on the basis of race,
and that allow for the
prosecution of individuals
who engage in clearly racially
motivated violent attacks.
Additionally, they know
that today's resident
of the United States would
condemn the use of racial slurs,
and most would profess a
belief in racial equality.
However, as Professor
Bell so wisely taught us,
the fact that racism operates
in different ways today
than it did in the past, the
fact that racism is more subtle
than it was in the past,
or the fact that much
of racial discrimination
is structural, and in some respects,
it's more likely to
stem from non-conscious
rather than conscious bias,
does not mean that racism is not present.
It does not mean that
racism is not a current
and pressing problem in our society today.
And in this lecture, I seek
to illustrate this point
by showing how the same race-based forces
and the same racist tropes
that worked in the past,
a past that we do not and can not deny,
was steeped in the ugliest
forms of race hatred,
are still operating in
contemporary society.
And I do so, by taking what many of you,
as an extraordinary case
about racial hatred from the 1950's,
the Emmett Till murder and trial
and comparing it to the
Trayvon Martin killing
and trial in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
And in so doing, I show how
the power of the stereotypes
that undergirded the Till case,
remain quite ordinary today.
At the same time, I highlight
a very subtle difference
in the operation of
these forces and tropes,
by showing how the two cases,
the Till and Martin cases,
reveal a movement from the Jim Crow era
of protecting whiteness as
property, in and of itself,
to a post-civil rights era protecting
what sociologist, Elijah
Anderson calls the white space.
In all, I argue that the
Till and Trayvon killings
and trials, centered on the policing
of boundaries of whiteness.
And thereafter, I take a step
back to very briefly examine
yet another commonality between
the Till and Trayvon case,
the cultural trauma, meaning
the group-based trauma
experienced by African Americans,
due to the acquittals in these trials,
and more so, what I've
identified as a very pattern
of actions that repeatedly bring us
to this form of cultural
trauma for African Americans.
In so doing, I ask and answer,
what is the cycle if any,
that creates and recreates
the group-based trauma
that African Americans experienced,
not only after police
and quasi-police killings
of non-threatening and
unarmed African Americans,
but more so the trauma that arises
after official legal responses
that have consistently
communicated to society
that Black lives do not, in
many ways, matter under the law.
In one of my current book projects,
I refer to this pattern or
routine as the new status quo.
But before I delve into my argument,
I wanna provide a refresher on the evil
that found its way to Emmett Till in 1955.
While I'm certain that most
of you do not need a reminder
of what happened to
Trayvon Martin in 2012,
I believe it might be helpful
to provide some basic facts
about what happened to Emmett Till.
So, what happened to Emmett Till?
At approximately 2:30
a.m. on August 28th, 1955,
two white men, J.W. Milam and
Roy Bryant invade the house
of Preacher Moses Wright,
an elderly Black man
who was hosting Emmett Till,
his 14 year old grand-nephew
from Chicago, Illinois,
at his home in Leflore
County in Mississippi.
After hearing through the rumor mill
that Till had allegedly wolf-whistled
at Roy Bryant's wife, Carolyn Bryant,
Milam and Bryant abducted the young Till
with plans to teach him a good lesson.
And in fact their lesson
would be Till's very last,
because Milam and Bryant
would beat, maim, and torture
the young boy so badly,
that his father's ring,
which Till wore during
his trip to Mississippi,
was the only clearly
identifiable item on his person.
And I wanna warn you,
I'm gonna show you the picture of Till.
In her autobiography, Death of Innocence,
The Story of the Hate
Crime that Changed America,
Till's mother, Mamie Till-Mobley,
described what she saw
when she had to identify
her only son's body.
She wrote, "When I got to his chin,
"I saw his tongue resting there.
"It was huge, I never
imagined that a human tongue
"could be that big."
"Maybe it was the effect of the water,
"since he had been in the
river for several days,
"or maybe the heat, but
as I gazed at the tongue,
"I couldn't help but think that it
"had been choked out of his mouth.
"I forced myself to move on,
"to keep going one
small section at a time,
"as if taking this gruesome
task in small doses,
"could somehow make it less excruciating.
"Step-by-step, as
methodically as his killers
"had mutilated my baby,
"I was putting him back together again,
"but only to identify a body."
Now, state officials of Mississippi
tried to convince Till-Mobley
to conduct burial services in
Mississippi, and she refused,
insisting that they send
her sons body to Chicago,
and eventually they
complied with her demands.
They sent Till's body back to Chicago,
but they told her don't open the casket.
We've sealed his body in his
casket and don't open it,
and hundreds of miles away in Chicago,
Till-Mobley, whose family's
roots were in Mississippi,
but who had lived in Chicago,
and gave birth to and
raised her son in Chicago,
defied their orders, and
opened up the casket.
And horrified by what
had been done to her son,
she decided she wanted the world to see
what race-hatred truly looked like.
She held a four day open casket
memorial service in Chicago.
More than 100,000 people
chose to attend the service,
with another 2,500 people
attending the actual funeral.
She also allowed the Black press
to both photograph her son's
mutilated face and body,
and publish the pictures on the pages
of their magazines and newspapers,
and images of the disfigured
young Till ran in Jet Magazine,
The Chicago Defender,
The Pittsburgh Courier,
The New York Amsterdam
News, and The Crisis.
And with this press,
Till's murder garnered
a significant amount of
attention and outrage
from both Blacks and whites,
particularly in the North,
and this outrage began to
grow, just about the same time
as the unthinkable occurred.
September 5, 1955 indictiment
of Milam and Bryant,
two white men for the
murder of Till, a Black boy,
by an all white male jury, Mississippi,
and one mostly consisting of planters.
And although Milam and Bryant
admitted to kidnapping Till
from his uncle's home,
on September 23rd, 1955,
an all white and all male jury
in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi,
acquitted the two white
men of the murder charge
for Till's death, and their
decision took only 67 minutes.
And one of the jurors
afterwards, said that in fact,
if they hadn't taken a
break to have a Coke,
it would have been even shorter.
One under-appreciated dimension
of the murder of Emmett Till
is that it occurred against the backdrop
of the 1954 US Supreme Court decision
in Brown vs. Board of Education,
and what Till's murder
shows us is that Brown
not only engendered anti-racist
solidarity among Blacks,
it also produced, as
Professor Bell taught us,
racist cross-class solidarity among whites
because of the property
value of whiteness.
Emmett Till arrived in Mississippi
during the summer of 1955
to visit family members, only
a year after the Supreme Court
had issued its decision in Brown One,
and just a few months, before Brown Two,
just a few months after
Brown Two, excuse me.
And more importantly,
he arrived in the middle
of a Southern revolt and
backlash against the decisions
and the change that they promised.
To many white Mississippians,
Northern Till,
just by his presence, represented a threat
to the social order, particularly
since so many of them
were still reeling from
the Brown decision.
J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant
were among those whites
who desperately fighting to maintain
their way of life in Mississippi.
As whites who were subsisting at a level
just above white sharecroppers,
Milam and Bryant had come
to place a high value,
not only on the material benefits
that their whiteness granted
them over African Americans,
but more so on WEB Du
Bois, and legal scholar,
Cheryl Harris, have defined
as the psychological wages of whiteness.
The compensation they received in the form
of knowing that they would
not fall to the bottom
of the social hierarchy, so
long as Blacks remained there.
The best evidence of how
the protection of whiteness,
and its intendant status, and privileges,
serve as a motivation for Till's murder,
came directly from Milam's mouth.
After Milam and Bryant were acquitted,
Milam bragged about murdering Till
to journalist Bradford Huie,
who later published an article
with the confession, in Look Magazine,
and Milam began his confession to Huie,
by expressing his desire to
keep Blacks in their place,
so that they would not
exercise their right to vote.
He proclaimed in part, "I
like N-words, in their place.
"I know how to work 'em, but
I just decided it was time
"a few people got put on notice.
"As long as I live, and
can do anything about it,
"N-words gonna stay in their place.
"N-words ain't gonna vote where I live,
"if they did, they'd
control the government."
So it's significant, but
not surprising that Milam
references troubles with the idea
of political participation
by Blacks in his confession.
After all, concerns about
Blacks voting in the area
had been growing ever
since the Brown decisions.
And although Blacks made up
the vast majority of residents
in both Laflore and Tallahatchie counties,
whites had been able to maintain
control over both counties
by preventing Blacks
from registering to vote,
including by killing those
who dared to register to vote.
In fact, no Blacks were
eligible to serve on the jury
in the murder trial
against Milam and Bryant,
because service on the jury,
depended upon eligibility to vote,
and no Blacks were registered to vote
in Tallahatchie County at all.
And in fact, no one could
remember the last time
an African American was registered to vote
in Tallahatchie County.
So, in his confession, Milam
revealed not only his concern
with Blacks voting in elections,
but also his knowledge to Blacks,
given that they were
numerically the majority
in Mississippi, and in
particular in his county,
could control politics if they had
a real opportunity to vote.
The strongest evidence of
Milam and Bryant's desire
to protect the wages of whiteness
came near the end of Milam's confession,
where Milam repeatedly referred
to Till's being a Northerner,
and where Milam complained over and over
that Till simply refused to capitulate
to the understood racial
hierarchy of Mississippi.
Milam ended his confession
declaring that he had no choice
but to murder Till, in order
to make an example of him
for Northern Blacks and any
others who might even question
the way of life in Mississippi.
He said, "Well, what else could I do.
"Me and my folks fought for this country
"and we got some rights.
"I stood there in that shed
and listened to that N-word
"throw that poison at me,
and I just made up my mind.
"Chicago Boy, I said, I'm
tired of them sending your kind
"down here to stir up trouble.
"God darn you, I'm gonna
make an example of you,
"just so everybody can know
how me and my folks stand."
And even before that, Milam
had suddenly noted one way
in which Till had already broken
the unwritten rules of the South.
A transgression that ended
up depriving Milam and Bryant
of one of the few signs of
respect, based on whiteness,
that they, as part of
the white working poor,
received in their daily lives,
being addressed as Sir
or Mister by Blacks.
Raised in the North as
opposed to the South,
Till was not accustomed to
racialized ways of communicating
between whites and Blacks in Mississippi.
This is referring to all whites,
including white children,
as Mister or Mrs., Miss or Ma'am.
And as a result, when Milam
and Bryant woke up Till
and his relatives from
their sleep at 2:30 a.m.,
and they shouted orders at him,
a groggy Till, unlike his uncle,
did not respond with the
customary yes or no sir.
Huie's retelling made it
clear that Milam felt insulted
by Till's failure to abide by these rules.
He wrote, big Milam shined the
light in Bobo's face, Till.
You the N-word who did the talking?
Yeah, Bobo replied.
Milam, don't say yeah to
me, I'll blow your head off.
Get your clothes on.
And in fact, Till is so
unaware of what's happening
that they're telling him
to get his clothes on,
and get rushing, and he's saying,
I've gotta put my socks on,
'cause you can't put
on shoes without socks.
Making plain his measure
of the psychological ways
that whiteness offered him,
as well as his disdain for
anyone who might even think
to suggest that any Black
was as good as a white man.
Milam proclaimed, "We were
never able to scare him.
"They had just filled him
so full of that poison
"that he was hopeless."
If Milam's comment about
his inability to rid Till
of his poisonous thoughts were not enough,
Milam's confession
indicates that it was Till's
alleged belief that he was equal to him,
that ultimately made him pull the trigger.
Huie wrote, big Milam ordered
Bobo to pick up the fan.
He staggered under its weight,
carried it to the riverbank.
They stood silently,
just hating one another.
Milam, "Take off your clothes."
Slowly, Bobo pulled off
his shoes, his socks,
he stood up, unbuttoned his
shirt, dropped his pants,
his shorts, he stood there naked.
It was Sunday morning,
a little before seven.
Milam, "You still as good as I am?"
Bobo, "Yeah."
That big 45 jumped in big Milam's hand,
the youth turned to catch
that big expanding bullet
in his right ear, he dropped.
Alright, so I also wanna
note that Mabie Till-Mobley
argued that this couldn't
possibly be true, and then,
obviously it's true that he shot Till,
but she said, if you look
at the picture of Till,
she's doubting that he could
have been standing still,
that he would have been
staring at anybody,
so, I wanted to note that,
because she has questioned the,
Many other white Mississippians,
Milam simply was not ready
and willing to give up,
even the arguably meager compensation
that whiteness provided him.
But much more was at stake than
the protection of whiteness
and its intendant privileges
for these two men, Milam and Bryant.
For white Mississippians as a whole,
whiteness and the social significance
that it would have for their own place
in a post-Brown world, was in danger.
Against the backdrop of the change
the Brown decisions threatened to bring,
Till, or rather the criticisms and attacks
that came from Northerners upon his death,
ultimately came to represent a threat
to white Mississippians
segregated way of life.
To protect segregation and
the benefits it yielded them,
many white Mississippians,
despite their initial reaction
to distance themselves from Milam,
so initially the Governor
comes out and says,
this is a murder, people
are condemning the,
Milam and Bryant have a hard time
even getting any attorneys,
but as there's more and more
criticism from the North,
white Mississippians
come around to protecting
the two known murderers,
with the resources
of a vigorous defense by
all five attorneys in town,
and ultimately with their complicity
in a not guilty verdict.
Further proof that white
Mississippians were motivated
more by their desire to preserve
the property value of whiteness,
any desire to protect Milam and Bryant
as individuals, was a manner
in which white Mississippians
deserted Milam and Bryant
when they were no longer
at risk of any further charges.
Once they were no longer
worried that a conviction
of Milam and Bryant could
function as an indictment
against our racially
segregated way of life,
they left the two men
to suffer on their own.
As Huie would report one year later,
in an article entitled,
What's happened to Emmett Till's Killers,
both Milam and Bryant suffered
severe personal consequences
after the trial.
Though neither would ever be incarcerated
or suffer any other legal punishment.
So, first boycotts by Blacks,
resulted in the actual closing
of all three stores the
Milam and Brant families
had operated for years.
Stores that had been
very dependent upon trade
from African Americans.
Upon his stores closing, Bryant
had trouble getting a job
and ultimately went to welding school,
and act which Milam claimed,
would be of no help to Bryant
and his family, because quote,
"By the time you've learned it,
"you've ruined your eyes", end quote.
Additionally Milam,
who prior to the murder
had employed Blacks to operate
his mechanical cotton picking machines,
could not find any Blacks who were willing
to work for him after the
Till murder and confession,
so he was compelled to hire white men,
whom he had to pay higher wages.
And in the end, Huie
summed the talk to Milam,
who still a year later, held
no remorse for murdering
the young Till as follows.
So, Milam is confused.
He understands why the
Negros have turned on him,
but he feels that the whites
still approve what he did.
Why then, should they be less cooperative,
when they were patting him on the back,
contributing money to him,
and calling him a fine
red-blooded American.
And Milam himself proclaimed,
I had a lot of friends a year ago,
everything's gone against me,
even the dry weather
which has hurt my cotton,
and living in a sharecrop with no water.
My wife and kids are having it hard.
So in essence, once
defending Milam and Bryant
was no longer tantamount to defending
the state system of segregation,
no white recipients cared about the fate
that the two men would suffer.
Excuse me.
Like Till, Trayvon Martin, who
had just turned 17 years old
in February of 2012, found
himself visiting family
in a strange new town that month.
Following a 10 day suspension
from his high school,
Martin's father, Tracy
Martin, brought his son
to Sanford, Florida,
which was four hours away
from his mother, Sybrina
Fulton's home in Miami, Florida.
And not just Miami, Florida,
but Miami Gardens, Florida,
so it's a town with a Black mayor,
a mostly Black city council,
a Black police chief, and so on.
This is where Martin grew up.
And Martin had been
suspended for having a baggie
that had marijuana
residue in his school bag.
And the reason for
bringing Martin to Sanford
was to prevent him from using his time
away from school, during his
suspension, unproductively,
by simply hanging out
with friends in Miami.
On the night of the fatal shooting,
Martin was a guest at the home
of his father's girlfriend,
Brandy Green, a Black woman
who was renting a townhome
in a neighborhood called
The Retreat at Twin Lakes,
in Sanford, Florida.
At approximately 7:15 p.m.
on February 26th, 2012,
Martin was returning from the local 7-11
after a candy and soda run,
to Green's home in The
Retreat at Twin Lakes,
the gated community where both Green
and George Zimmerman lived.
And likely due to the rain that night,
Martin pulled the hood of his black hoodie
over his head, as he spoke to his friend,
Rachel Jeantel on the phone.
At the same time, George Zimmerman,
who was the captain of
the gated subdivisions
neighborhood watch program,
was driving to Target in his SUV,
and when he spotted Martin in the rain,
Zimmerman made a 911 call to report Martin
as a suspicious person, and
despite being instructed
by the 911 operator to
remain in his vehicle,
Zimmerman, who was carrying a gun,
failed to follow these directives.
He continued to follow Martin
and ultimately confronted the teenager,
and the next thing that Jeantel heard,
was Martin asking why
are you following me?
And then she heard a voice say,
what are you doing around here?
Following that, Jeantel
heard what she believed
was another person pushing Martin,
Martin's phone crashing to the ground,
wet grass sounds, and then
Martin saying, get off, get off.
For a short while longer,
Jeantel heard arguing in the background,
and then the phone line went dead.
So, only Martin and Zimmerman
know what transpired
after that point, but one undisputed fact
is that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin,
who was an unarmed guest of a resident
in that same gated community.
Martin had nothing on his
person, but his cell phone,
and Arizona watermelon
soda, a bag of Skittles,
$40.15 in cash, a cigarette
lighter, and some headphones.
And much like Till, when he
came to visit his relatives
in Money, Mississippi in
1955, Martin entered Sanford
without any real knowledge
of the racially tense
environment that he was entering.
and Sanford has this
infamous racial history.
In fact, it's the town
where Jackie Robinson
was run out of town, not
just once, but twice.
At the time there had
been a, the year before,
there had been a previous
shooting by a police officer
of a young Black man,
and the evidence showed
that he had been moving
away from the officer,
and the officer said, he
had been coming toward him.
So, there was a lot of
tension in the town.
So, what Martin did not know,
is that he was walking in a neighborhood
where residents, much like
white Mississippians in 1955,
were fighting to preserve
the whiteness of their neighborhood,
or rather the meaning
accorded to white spaces,
that their neighborhood
had previously claimed.
Additionally, Martin had no
idea that he would encounter
a person like George Zimmerman,
who like Milam and Bryant,
may have been working to
preserve his precarious status
within the neighborhoods racial
and class based hierarchy,
because of his status as
a renter in a community
that was increasingly hostile to renters,
and as someone who was part Latino.
As numerous studies have revealed,
whites are the most
racially segregated group
in the United States, and that reality
is not by pure mistake or coincidence.
On average, whites live in
neighborhoods that are 74% white,
and unlike whites, Blacks,
Latinos, and Asians,
are willing to live in a neighborhood
in which they are the numerical minority.
But more importantly,
researchers have found
that whites are the most
segregated racial group
in the country, because they prefer
to have only a few minority neighbors.
For example, as the research
of sociologist, Maria Krysan,
and Camille Zubrinsky Charles has shown,
prejudice is the strongest
predictor of resistance
to racial integration among whites,
while fear of discrimination
is the strongest predictor
of Blacks avoidance of
white neighborhoods.
In fact, the work of scholars,
Richard Wright, Mark Ellis,
and Steve Holloway reveals
that diversity is a turnoff
within white dominated spaces,
for same-race white households.
And another study revealed that diversity
was one of the strongest factors,
in terms of negatively
predicting the degree
to which whites viewed neighbor
relations as harmonious.
As Andrew Hacker explains in his book,
Two Nations, Black, White,
Separate, Hostile, Unequal,
many whites view living in neighborhoods
with meaningful racial
minority populations,
as being less than, or inferior in terms
of their social standing,
and thus they work hard
to police those boundaries.
And at the time that
Zimmerman killed Martin,
his neighborhood, The
Retreat at Twin Lakes,
was undergoing a transformation.
The kind of transformation that tends
to push white's police boundaries,
police the boundaries of
what Elijah Anderson calls,
the white space.
At the time, the downturn
in the economy had resulted
in a change in the ratio
of owners to renters,
like Zimmerman, at The
Retreat at Twin Lakes,
and there were more and
more foreclosures happening,
and along with foreclosures
came a drop in the value
of the townhouses in the neighborhood,
with the homes that once
cost buyers $250,000
falling to prices below $100,000.
Additionally, a larger number of townhomes
in the gated subdivision went empty,
and the neighborhood, at the same time,
was becoming more racially diverse.
By 2011, residents of the neighborhood
began to report an increasing
number of burglaries
to the police, and at that point,
the tenor and pattern of
911 calls by Zimmerman,
who had previously made many calls,
but without a racial
pattern, began to change.
So, Zimmerman before,
had been making calls,
but he would be calling
about somebody's dog,
that it was barking too loud.
But after these burglaries,
all of a sudden,
the suspicious individuals
who became the subject
of his calls, had one thing in common,
they were all Black males.
And in fact, he even once called to report
a seven to nine year old Black male
being in the neighborhood,
and that was simply the call,
that there was a kid in the
neighborhood, and he was Black.
Overall, the neighborhood watch residents
began their efforts to
preserve the whiteness
of The Retreat at Twin Lakes,
or at least the perception
of the neighborhood as a white space,
'cause it was actually fairly diverse.
As Bertalan would later explain,
people were freaked out,
it wasn't just George calling the police,
we were calling police
at least once a week.
She continued, there was
definitely a sense of fear
in the neighborhood, after
all that started happening,
and it just kept on happening.
It wasn't just a one-time
thing, it was every week.
Our next door neighbor actually said,
if someone came into his
yard he would shoot him,
someone came into his
house, he would shoot him.
Everyone felt afraid and scared.
But the fact that only two
of the neighborhoods 44
burglaries, attempted break-ins,
and suspected break-ins were confirmed
to have involved Black males,
supports the notion that
the protection of whiteness
and the protection of white spaces,
and the stereotypes of Blacks,
were heavily guiding the actions
of neighborhood watch
participants, like Zimmerman.
It was not simply that Zimmerman,
and other neighborhood watch participants
linked blackness to criminality,
that they viewed Blacks
who were in the spaces
that they viewed as
white, their neighborhood,
as criminals, as outsiders
who were up to no good.
And in fact, long after
it was shown that Martin,
who had no criminal record,
was simply walking back to the townhome,
where he was a guest of
his father's girlfriend.
Frank Taaffe, a white
resident in the neighborhood,
insisted during a television interview
that Martin was out of
place in the neighborhood,
and should not have come near
his home, while he was away.
Taaffe's interview proceeded as follows.
"Frank, what made him look suspicious?
"What made him look
suspicious in your mind?
"Just because he was
walking through your yard?"
Taaffe, "He was out of place.
"George knew he didn't live
there, he was out of place.
"He was out of place."
Williams, "He had a
right to be there Frank."
Taaffe, "He's out of place.
"He's on private property,
that's my property."
Alright, Taaffe has
since come out and says
that he believes that George Zimmerman
actually murdered Trayvon.
And although as many as eight burglaries
within a years time, may
recently concern many residents,
in this instance the concern
seemed to be racialized
in a way, that was not
corroborated by actual data,
but rather by standard implicit biases.
Professor Song Richardson has explained,
studies show that just
thinking about crime,
can trigger non-conscious
thoughts about Blacks,
which in turn activates Black stereotypes,
and disturbingly, not only
does seeing a Black individual
bring negative racial stereotypes
to mind non-consciously,
but simply thinking about crime,
triggers implicit thoughts about Blacks
in police officers and civilians alike.
Additional evidence that the role
that the protection of whiteness played
in Zimmerman's viewing
Martin as suspicious,
following him, and then
killing the young boy,
lay in the perceptions and experiences
of residents of color at
The Retreat at Twin Lakes.
And these residents,
either did not perceive
the same problems as Zimmerman
and other neighborhood watch participants,
or they became the targets of the policing
by Zimmerman and other
neighborhood watch participants.
People, like then 25 year old
Ibrahim Rashada, a Black man,
had to alter their daily rituals
because they no longer
felt free to roam about
in their own community,
and they no longer felt free to do so,
when Zimmerman and other
neighborhood watch participants
began their policing with
a focus on Black males.
So for example, instead of taking walks
in his own neighborhood,
Rashada began to take his
regular walks downtown.
As he explained, quote,
"I fit the stereotype he",
Zimmerman, "emailed around,
a Black guy did this,
"a black guy did that, so I
thought let me sit in the house.
"I don't want anyone
chasing me", end quote.
So much can be learned from comparing
and analyzing the death and trials,
concerning Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin.
This comparison raises
questions about how far
we have truly come, when past injustices
simply seem to emerge in new forms.
Much like Professor Bell
might have explained to us,
the killing of Trayvon
Martin, and other police,
and quasi-police killings that
have occurred in recent years
are in many ways, adapted forms of racism
that previously took
the form of lynchings,
like the killing of Emmett Till.
More so, as Professor Bell once explained
in his article, Racial Realism,
understanding these patterns
and adaptations of racism
and repeated discrimination
is necessary, if we are
ever to devise strategies
for eliminating their effects in society.
In Racial Realism, Professor
Bell directly contemplated
the effects of repeated discrimination,
explaining how we must
acknowledge these realities
as well as the limits of law,
if we ever want to truly change society.
He wrote, quote, "Unhappily,
most Black spokespersons
"and civil rights
organizations remain committed
"to the ideology of racial equality.
"Acceptance of racial realism concept
"would enable them to
understand and respond
"to recurring aspects of
our subordinate status.
"It would free them to think
and plan within a context
"of reality rather than idealism.
"The realities that Blacks still suffer
"disproportionately
higher rate of poverty,
"joblessness, and insufficient healthcare
"than other ethnic populations
in the United States.
"The ideal is that law,
through racial equality
"can lift them out of this trap.
"I suggest we abandon this ideal
"and move on to a fresh,
realistic approach.
"Casting off the burden
of equality ideology
"will lift the sights,
providing a birds-eye-view,
"of situations that are distorted by race.
"From this broadened perspective
on events and problems,
"we can better appreciate and cope
"with racial subordination."
So taking these wise words
from Professor Bell in account,
I've begun to delve into a larger project
that considers how police
and quasi-police killings
of unarmed African Americans,
and more importantly,
how the legal outcomes in these cases
can deepen our understanding
about what sociologists
have defined as cultural trauma.
And more so, about the patterns of conduct
that bring us to these
group-based traumas.
Sociologist Jeffrey
Alexander of Yale University
defines cultural trauma as a group trauma
that quote, "Occurs when
members of a collective
"feel they have been subjected
to a horrendous event
"that leaves indelible marks
upon the group consciousness,
"marking their memories forever,
"and changing their future identity
"in fundamental and irrevocable ways."
As a group African Americans
have experienced trauma,
cultural trauma, not only
in relation to killings
like those Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin,
but also in relation to the acquittals
that were handed down at
the end of those trials,
and more so, the
non-indictments and acquittals
that have seemed to become
routine in our society.
One of the ways in which such killings,
followed by repeated
acquittals, or non-indictments,
have traumatized African Americans,
they have left so many
of us with an expectation
of injustice in our criminal
system, in our justice system.
Consider the response of
the family of Tamir Rice,
the 12 year old African American
boy who was shot and killed
while playing with a toy
gun in Cleveland, Ohio.
Consider the response, after
officer Timothy Loehmann,
the man who shot the 12 year
old child within two seconds
of his arrival on the scene,
was not indicted for taking his life.
Sasha Ginzberg, one of the
attorneys for the Rice family
responded to the non-indictment
by proclaiming, quote,
"Tamir's family is saddened
"and disappointed by this
outcome, but not surprised."
Others, such as Reverend Jawanza Colvin,
an African American pastor
at a Cleveland church
who would push for Loehmann's arrest,
expressed similar sentiments.
Colvin declared, quote, "The
fact that we are not surprised
"by the Grand Jury decision
is in and of itself
"an indictment of the culture
"of the criminal justice
system", end quote.
And while such responses
by the Rice family
and other African Americans,
could be read solely
as a pessimistic outlook
on the justice system,
they should instead be
understood as measured responses
to a sociological pattern
of events and decisions
that have developed in
cases involving police,
and quasi-police killings of
unarmed African Americans,
a pattern that begins
by the tragic killing
or horrific beating of a non-threatening
or an African American,
that is frequently followed
by an acquittal or
non-indictment of the officer
or quasi-officers who
killed the unarmed victim,
and that ends in cultural trauma
and a sense of hopelessness
and disappointment
in the American legal
system by African Americans.
And in fact, in my work
I've identified seven steps.
Understanding these patterns of racism
and how they have evolved
and are evolving over time is critical.
If we are to devise ways for
combating such structural
and attitudinal problems in our society.
As Professor Bell
explained in his article,
Racism is Here to Stay, in
spite of short-termed advances
in the civil rights
movement, Black people,
all people must acknowledge
how racial patterns
adapt in ways that
maintain white dominance.
Only then can we be,
quote, "Free to imagine
"and implement racial
strategies that can bring
"fulfillment, and even
triumph", end quote.
As he further explained,
it is this, quote,
"Acknowledgement of racism's permanence,
"which far from an invitation
to ultimate despair,
"or serve as the
opportunity for new insight,
"more effective planning, and
perhaps, renewed victory."
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
Thank you.
You have a question?
- [Trevor] We have a few minutes
for questions if you'd like
and there are microphones
in each of the aisles.
So, if you'd like to ask a question,
just please come to the mic, thanks.
- Hi.
- Hello.
- [Man] Dear Angela, what a
magnificent set of reflections,
- Thank you.
- [Man] On 1955 on Emmett Till
and more recently on Trayvon Martin.
I just have a small question,
which has to do with what
strikes me as a huge difference
between the killing of Trayvon Martin
and the killings that you
referenced by police officers
who are state officials,
because it seems to me, crucial,
to mark the, in some ways,
more horrific reality
that connects the Trayvon killing
to the Emmett Till killing,
in that these were civil society killings,
by white citizens, and the
specificity of the connection
between the two cases, I
think consists in the fact
that we still live in a state,
in a white supremacist state
that effectively delegates
to white private citizens the police power
over Black life and death,
a kind of sovereignty, a dominion,
so there's that spacial aspect.
But there's also very much this idea
that white citizenship
consists of that interest,
that political interest
in necropolitics, so law,
the state is an ideological
weapon of death,
but white citizenship
itself in these instances
shows itself to be, and to consist
of the killing of Black bodies,
of necropolitics as white Republican,
racial Republican identity,
and I use that word
Republican deliberately.
So, what would you say
about that type-fit,
the tightness of the
fit, uniqueness of it,
which in some ways for me,
makes it more horrific,
in the post-civil rights era,
than the Emmett Till case?
- So, I would actually say that,
and I completely agree with you,
and I would actually say that,
in the same way that whites
could function as a quasi-police,
in the pre-civil rights era,
that we're having this happen
in the post-civil rights era.
And so, one of the ways this is happening
is the expansion of path of
doctrine as Genie Suka said,
expansion of the space in
which people are allowed
to protect themselves.
It used to be your home.
It used to be you could stand
your ground in your home,
but now the space is expanded.
And so then, with that
expansion of the space,
it's also happened, the
expansion of the people,
who as you point out, don't
have an official state role,
or don't have an official government role.
I mean, I think that I absolutely agree
with everything you said, I
don't know what other to add,
but I think that this is,
I think they're very similar,
and that you could say,
that what's happening
today, that in the same way,
there is this sort of unofficial extension
of police authority to white citizens
in the pre-civil rights era.
We see the same thing
happening in today's society.
- Well, you've given us a
lot to think about, let's
(audience applauding)
Really a tour-de-force, thank
you all for joining us for it.
We hope that you'll
join us for a reception
in Greenberg Lounge, just across the way.
But thank you again for being here,
and thanks to tonight's lecturer.
(audience applauding)
