Trayvon Martin and Beyond: America’s Systemic Role in Injustice

By now just about everyone in this country has heard of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Gaps of logic and purposeful injustice have led to citizens calling for an investigation to not just into George Zimmerman but the Sanford police department entirely. The outrage is understandable and charges should be brought, but this article will delve deeper by asking fundamental questions of how and why this incident occurred? While most Americans recognize overt racism should be frowned upon and corrected, what most fail to realize is that racism and prejudice manifests in multiple forms. A larger, unspoken truism still dictates the culture, economy, and justice system that we live in.

Due to Civil Rights activism for hundreds of years it has become socially incorrect, immoral, and outside public discourse to be an overt racist. Yelling overtly that Hispanics should not be paid as much as white males is now largely and rightfully disdained by Americans across the spectrum. Overt racism as defined by Professor Khyati Joshi states, “a public, conscious act intended to harm or damage a person or a group of people of another race specifically because of the race of the victimized person or group of people.” While this has been significantly tackled, aversive racism still thrives. Fostered by America’s norms, inferences, culture, economic models, and applications of the law, adversive racism haunts a minority’s life from birth to death. This is not to say that overt racism is dead per-se but to note the transformation and transfer of it into more ambiguous arenas.

For the purpose of clarity I will define racism as Doctors Feagin and Vera in 1995 explained, “Racism is more than a matter of individual prejudice and scattered episodes of discrimination”; it involves a widely accepted racist ideology and the power to deny other racial groups the “dignity, opportunities, freedoms, and rewards” that are available to one’s own group through “a socially organized set of ideas, attitudes, and practices.”

Adversive racism can be found in a multitude of areas in our daily lives. When a white male proclaims, “I refuse to allow my son to be taught English by that Hispanic teacher, he/she can’t even speak it themselves without an accent!” Another example in what is seen in a positive light would be, “That minority speaks so well! Clearly he is an outstanding citizen that we can all appreciate.” One final negative declaration would be saying something similar to, “Why do they wear their bottoms to low! Clearly they are up to no good and if I have to hear there loud music that makes no sense what so ever I’m going to lose it!”

To the aversive racist these are personally reasonable points. Unlike the overt racist who publicly declares their hatred for another group, the aversive racist actually sees themselves as a fighter for egalitarian values. You will find the aversive racist condemning his vocal counterpart in ways that seem genuine to the fight for equality. What makes the aversive racist is the subtlety, the type of quotations listed above without critical analysis looks perfect legitimate to the avert racist. This is because for this particular person, their reactions are neurologically automatic responses which develop from the prenatal stage into adolescent years. Unfortunately for minorities, socialization of the brain is riddled with logical fallacies and cognitive biases.

While logical fallacies and cognitive biases are not innately more common in white males, due to our economic system, justice system, and norms, as defined by the predominate power ethnicity white males, the effects of these fallacies and biases disproportionately harm minorities. What a white male means when they criticize a particular Hispanics accent is, if you do not speak in our accent you are unacceptable. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of leaving their house would recognize there are countless accents of Americans, none of which are correct. The purpose of statement however is not to make a historical statement about the alterations of the English language in America since colonists sailed over, it is to infer that our style of speaking, like a white male, is correct and therefore superior.

In what is seen as a compliment by many white males to minorities who in their opinion who speak well, is actually inferring that this individual speaks in a way that is similar to my group, that group of course being white males. Finally when law makers push for legislation that targets those who wear jeans or shorts too low, they are creating systemic suspicion of those who dress like a certain group, that group of course being African Americans and Hispanics. Sadly for the young white kids who dress like them, they have been coerced and are told to “stop acting black”, as if there was a black way to act. When supposed photos of Trayvon leaked, they were fake, of him wearing a baggy jeans defendants instantly hung the mission accomplished sign as a case and point of why he was the aggressor. I mean look at him he dresses so nonwhite, think of dangerous he represents! These unconscious biases are fostered by a cocktail of systemic racism in our justice system and our economic system.

“More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” writes Michelle Alexander author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. This staggering statistic is only made more revealing by the fact that historical crime rates are at all-time lows. Due to the continuation of our failed, or successful from the prison industrial complex’s perspective, war on drugs, minorities, especially black males, have been targeted at disproportionate rates for enforcement. Policies such as stop and frisk in New York paint a clear picture of racism. A system based on subjective evidence, 600,000 people were stopped randomly and frisked by police officers. Of those 600,000 randomly groped individuals, 90 percent were Hispanic and African American. Overall in less than 15 percent of those cases was there any kind of suspect description involved.

Today almost 10 percent of young African American men are behind bars. Overall African-Americans only make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population – and about 44 percent of America’s prison inmates according to Census numbers. This is in spite of the fact that study after study reveals that African Americans and White Americans use drugs at essentially the same rate, some revealing white males actually use more, and sell at the same rate. Why then would one race be so disproportionately represented in jail despite equality of violations of a law?

Law enforcers primarily look for drug possession or drug trade in minority neighborhoods and bars while ignoring upper socioeconomic locations. According to Human Rights Watch, African Americans were arrested as much as five-and-a-half times as whites on drug charges every year for the past three decades. The trend dates back to the ’80s, the earliest date with complete data. This selective enforcement is indicative of structural racism which breeds adversive racism. A presumption of stereotypical guilt is applied to minorities despite facts presented otherwise. When a minority is walking towards you do you think, “Danger”? Unfortunately many Americans do and they often use criminal statistics to back up their concerns.

While some laws on the books are applied disproportionately to minorities, others such as crack cocaine provide the gateway for harsher sentences. While most white Americans use the powdered form, the rock form is predominately used by African Americans. While no neurologically or physiological differences exist, the version of the drug used by African Americans is more strictly enforced and punished heavy handedly. Democracy Now reports:

The Senate has approved a measure that would reduce the disparity in sentencing for possession of crack and powder cocaine. Under current laws, individuals convicted of crack cocaine possession are given the same mandatory sentence as someone with 100 times more powder cocaine. The Senate measure would reduce that ratio to eighteen to one. Drug reform advocates have called for the disparity to be completely eliminated.

While reform has been accomplished, the fact that a ratio of 100:1 was enforced systemically, despite no real difference aside the people that use them, shows a clear racial profiling by our justice system. Not only does our justice system decide who to enforce laws based on no facts, punish those who are caught violating the law at disproportionate rates, but it also decides who lives and dies based on nothing but race.

Since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions according to Amnesty International. In a 1990 report, the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office found “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty” and that “the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.”

Following up on that report in 2007 a study of death sentences in Connecticut conducted by Yale University School of Law revealed that African-American defendants receive the death penalty at three times the rate of white defendants in cases where the victims are white. In addition, killers of white victims are treated more severely than people who kill minorities, when it comes to deciding what charges to bring. Overall in 2011 the United States ranked 5th in the world following the picture of democratic states; China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia.

Looking at these statistics alone one would presume African Americans commit crimes at a higher rate. The socialization of the adversive racist is surrounded by confirmation bias and educated by structural racism. It allows the adverse racist’s automatic processes to go unchallenged; in fact it is solidified continuously. Defendants of Zimmerman in the media aid to the biases and cultural racism. They now point to the fact that Trayvon was suspended from school after traces of marijuana were found in his book bag. This character assassination of Trayvon infers that this young minority male was smoking weed, and wearing baggy pants causing trouble everywhere he went. Just another thug life criminal! Defenses of Zimmerman using those terms are showered in aversive racism.

These are the type of thought processes that adversive racists spend their lives in. Why would a young black kid wearing those types of clothes be walking here? If he lived here he would dress like me and for that matter he’d drive over in his Mercedes! These thoughts, like those I mentioned earlier, represent an inherent suspicion in an out group if they do not behave or dress in a bourgeoisie fashion. As soon by the 911 calls released, George Zimmerman had a record for assuming the worst even if he never publicly declared his hatred for a race.

Economically the story is same. What is characterized as the free market is often summed up by a market where freedom of racism can be exercised. Doctors Ayres, Banaji, and Jolls in 2011 studied the effects of subtle racism, adversive racism, in the market place. The methodology and results are summarized in the Washington Post:

The researchers first purchased cards for modest amounts on eBay (roughly $3 to $8), then resold them, varying the color of the hand that held the card up to the camera. The low price minimized the chance buyers would be (legitimately) worried about fraud. The sellers had neutral seller i.d.’s consisting of initials and digits, and their eBay history either showed no past auctions or a small number that turned out well.

The average difference between the two groups of cards was about 90 cents, or 20 percent. The negative effect increased when a black player appeared on a card held by a black hand, and when the buyer came from a “whiter” zip code.

The result, the researchers said, was unlikely to be rooted in racial animus, but rather had to do with “implicit” racism, or the possibly-unconscious association of African Americans with undesirable traits. EBay was a fruitful place to study the effects of this kind of racism on economic transactions, they said, because the situation was so tightly controllable: Just about the only variable was that glimpse of a bit of white or black skin.

These results can be expanded to a larger level in all aspects of our economy. Studies have shown that resumes that contain names which are non-traditional nonwhite type names will be less likely to be called back in the hiring process. What is inferred is that this name is nonwhite, which are the accepted norm and the correct way to behave. Other names, dresses, or life styles are not accepted. A thought process such as that can lead to deadly assumptions, as what occurred in the Trayvon Martin case or wrongful convictions such as Oscar Grant, who was sentenced to death based on no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

Not only do minorities suffer when attempting to purchase goods due to implicit or adversive racism, they are paid far less than white males. According to Terry O’Neill of Wow, “Well, it’s because women are paid only 77 cents to the dollar on average, the gender wage gap. But for women of color, there is a race-based, as well as a gender-based, wage gap. So African-American women are being paid just 69 cents on the dollar and Latinas just 59 cents on the dollar.” For minority women they are forced to carry the brunt of racism and sexism in their daily activities.

What is possibly sadder than that blatantly structural racism is the type of punishment handed out to minority youth within on school system; like that of the drug enforcement, expulsion and suspension of minority children far outweigh that of white children. According to the Department of Education lack students constituted only 18 percent of those enrolled in sample schools, but accounted for 39 percent of all school expulsions. Black students were three-and-a-half times as likely overall to be suspended or expelled than white students. School reports also showed that more than 70 percent of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to local law enforcement were black or Latino.

Could this be an effort by adversive racists to discipline ethnicities who in their eyes are prone to act up? Why would one group of students get one treatment and another receive something different? The only possibility, if the offense is the same, is you feel that one type of group must be dealt with more severally or only respond to a certain type of punishment. Young whites are more likely to be given a second chance or seen as just making a mistake, while young minorities are seen as acting on some innate sense that has to be combated against or risk devastating results in the future. This is the type of adversive racism that a child recognizes early on, it doesn’t take long in a culture of constant comparison of each other as is in the case in grammar school, to notice why and when someone is being treated different. Yes from the first day of school we teach minorities that they are somehow inferior.

In order to remedy these injustices and progress towards a path where minorities will have an environment which emphases creativity, prosperity, and happiness, adversive racism must be combatted against. Minorities are forced to overcome countless economic and law enforcement injustice. This type of environment instead fosters a culture of adversive racism where all those cultures not specifically mimicked after the 1 percent in this country, white bourgeois males, are cast in a shadow of guilt until proven innocence.

What little injustices I have identified here are nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. Organizations such as ALEC draft legislation for looser gun control, drug laws, and privatized prison laws all of which target minorities disproportionately. At the same time, states work to take away voting rights for those who are currently in prison or have committed a felony. A felony of course defined by ALEC, as having a certain amount of drug which as you have seen, is specifically targeted to minorities. At the same time similar groups push for legislation to make voting more inaccessible in low socioeconomic neighborhoods.

To begin to address any of these issues we must first critically analyze ourselves, and then ask for solutions from the minority’s community. It is not up to us to tell a certain group what should be the solution to correct their woes. As you have seen, we often act of our own self-interest rather than looking to make that community self-sustainable. Until we can overcome our own self-serving arrogance as a people, ignorance will prevail, and Trayvon Martin will be just another minority who is a victim to amoral system of profit and greed.

This is where the Occupy movement comes in. The Occupy movement itself is a laboratory of direct democracy and self-determination. Systemic alterations and critical analysis of all fields is what made Occupy catch on so quickly and attract such unique demographics. While some movements will hold a one day rally for racial justice, Occupy looks for immediate solutions as well as systemic change that will prevent future tragedies. Solutions from within the community are the only causational repairing mechanisms possible for such a monumental feat but if Occupy has taught us anything it’s that, with the right amount of education, energy, and effort, we can change the unchangeable.

-Daniel Fisher