"Race" is a word used to refer to the categorizing of groups of people by observable traits. These traits vary from ethnicity to religious to culture to nationality depending on the circumstances. Since all humans belong scientifically to one species: homo sapiens. Race is not a scientific denotation, but a cultural one developed by anthropologists and apologists of a hierarchical system of classifying different groups of people. According to the 1998 American Anthropological Association's "Statement on Race":
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In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups . . . Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances."
In the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, there are many who argue that protestors are "making" it about race.
However, I think these voices define race differently than those they argue against. When some says that people are "making" these stories about race--I generally find that they mean to say that the stories are being reframed as "poor persecuted black people" stories. I have had several discussions on Facebook in which I have been told that Michael Brown's color is less important than his acts of stealing cigarillos and punching Darren Wilson. This assumes that protestors perpetuate the evils of racism by defending criminals solely based on their color. I don't think this is the case.
By drawing attention to the trend of unarmed black men being killed by white cops (or cops at all), I think many protestors are pointing to the institutionalization of the assumption that black skin as a physical difference indicates criminality and danger. When someone is "making it about race," I contend that (for the most part) they intend to point up the classification conditioned into our culture that leads to use of lethal force against unarmed men.
Race is a product of circumstances not of physical, inherent, or essential differences between individuals. It is a complex systems of understanding developed through cultural interactions between those who have power and those who do not. It is imbedded deeply into American culture from our nation's beginnings. A new book details how entirely our country's economic success results from the slave trade and slave labor [
more about the subject and the book here]. Our major civil war resting around succession based on the ability to own and sell slaves and our major civil rights movements both point to the underlying tensions resting on the culturally developed classifications based on color and appearance. This has become so pervasive that it rides below our consciousness. In a study [
here], it was determined by measuring sweat glands response showing images of different colored people and administering a shock. When the images were shown again without the shock, the sweat glands were again tested to see if the image had turned into a fear trigger. They discovered that unless you had dated someone of another race (read someone who had a different skin color), people responded to images of other races with increase sweat production--identified as fear. While this study is limited, it suggests that one incident of connecting fear with another race sticks below the subconscious perpetuating that fear regardless of intellectual knowledge (i.e. the shock isn't that bad, the picture itself can't hurt me, any picture could have a shock attached, the administrator could be a random jerk).
Another study asks participants to associate images of people with good/bad, family/work, etc in a fraction of a second [
here]. They found that people were slower to associate black faces with good than white faces, however if there was a black person administering the test, participants were faster to associate black faces with good. The above article also details another experiment which measured activity in the part of the brain that registers fear while showing split second images of black faces between patterns. When flashed through, participants fear centers illuminated, however when they were allowed to see the image for longer (to actually process the face) the fear was reduced.
All this is to say that the initial fear response toward black individuals has been imbedded into our culture in addition to our economic, judicial, and police systems. This is not in any way to say that people as a whole think that black individuals or groups are inherently bad; it is to say that systemically black individuals and groups are more likely to be assumed guilty and proved innocent even if subconsciously. As the above studies point out, this subconscious bias does not hold up in those who've dated someone of another color and even when there's time to process images fear disappears. However, in moments when there isn't time to think--like stopping a pair of possible thieves, responding to a possible gun in a park, or even dealing with a large man--these biases can swing out with a vengeance while the reasoning centers of our brain are overwhelmed by adrenaline.
The fact that race is not an inherent difference in individuals/groups means that we should be constantly on guard for patterns that support the idea that it is an inherent difference: for example, the number of unarmed black men killed by police officers (or anyone) with impunity. When the system agrees that Darren Wilson's fear was enough reason for him to use lethal force on Michael Brown. In reading
his testimony, he stated that his initial interaction with the young men was about walking on the sidewalk and then when he noticed the cigarillos he identified them as "the two men from the stealing". After which he proceeded to call for backup and reverse the car to cut them off. Without telling them what he was detaining them for, without announcing his intentions, he backed up, cut them off and asked Brown to come to him. The violence that Wilson describes is full of his fear: after being hit in the face and fighting over the car door, he decides that instead of mace, baton, or flashlight, he pulls his gun and threatens to shoot Brown who grabs the gun. He uses words like "demon" and "hulk" to describe Brown. Many of his details are uncertain--he turned away before being hit and so wasn't sure exactly how that happened, or he wasn't certain if Brown's hands were in fists or not. The trouble is that his identification of the Brown and his friend was based on their skin color and the cigarillos. While he had a right to ask them in for questioning or even to call in back up like he did, the escalation to firearms through fear was one which ultimately took Brown's life and denied him his guaranteed right to a trial of a citizen of this country.
This is what I find disturbing. That the system is built in such a way that supports and encourages responses based on fear in it's law enforcement officers.
It is devastating in the space of a couple weeks to hear that there will not be a trial for Darren Wilson, that Tamir Rice was shot dead in a park while holding a toy gun, and that Eric Garner was choked to death on a street corner while someone filmed it and his killers were not indicted. It sickens me that people I know that I generally think well of refuse to see the systemic inequality still present in economic, academic, judicial, and cultural structures in this country. We don't know what post-racial looks like because our systems still discriminate even when we refuse to see it, think ourselves above it, or don't see the recognizable forms of visual hierarchy that we eliminated in this country (i.e. segregated drinking fountains).
A couple extra resources:
