Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body

Epilogue

Epilogue In January 2009, psychologists at York University (Canada), the University of British Columbia, and Yale University published the results of a study that “examine[d] why acts of blatant racism against blacks still occur with alarming regularity.”1 After staging a “racist incident” in which a white actor calls a black actor, who bumps into him, a “clumsy nigger” before unsuspecting nonblack subjects, the authors observed that the majority of their 120 subjects “respond[ed] with indifference.”2 Their conclusion: apathy enables racist acts. In February, the New York Post, a newspaper known for printing controversial headlines, published a political cartoon depicting a chimpanzee murdered (by the police) that appeared to represent President Barack Obama.3 In April, a poll conducted among teachers in the United Kingdom revealed that 64 percent of respondents “agreed or strongly agreed that racism [against ‘black and ethnic minority’ students] was an issue in schools generally.”4 In May, Omar Edwards, an off-duty black police of‹cer who was engaged in “police action,” was mistaken as a criminal suspect and gunned down by a fellow New York policeman.5 In June, an eighty-eight-year-old “neo-Nazi” opened ‹re in the U.S. Holocaust Museum—killing a black security guard—in protest of the presidency of Obama. In July, black literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was mistakenly identi‹ed as a burglar attempting to enter his own home and was arrested by the police for what cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson termed “housing while black.” In October, a Louisiana judge refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple “out of concern for any children that the couple might have.” Spectacular events, charged, racializing scenarios that not only envelop black folk but also structure their embodied experiences, occur every day. They happen in schools, in the workplace (even as you are applying for a job), 209 in restaurants, and on the street. At times, they are subtle: the closed-door or behind-the-back conversations black folk suspect are occurring but to which they do not have access. It is these suspicions that cultural anthropologist John L. Jackson labels racial paranoia. At times, spectacular events are too ›agrant to be ignored: racial pro‹ling or the burning of a cross. This book places a spotlight on several of these scenarios and chronicles the ways in which black folk have responded to the violent intrusion of race/racism in their lives and reveals the similarities between the embodied black experiences of the past and the present. The performance of Renty before J. T. Zealy’s daguerreotype machine resonates with the stillness of hundreds of thousands of black bodies in police precincts and detention centers. The stand of Ali, against governmental efforts to control and marshal his body, gestures back toward earlier efforts to control the bodies of Tom Molineaux and Saartjie Baartman and, perhaps, foreshadows the contemporary experience of Muslims within the United States, whose movements are tracked as part of an ongoing “War on Terror.” The nightmares of Robbie McCauley remind us that the experiences of prior generations can be accessed and replayed by their descendants. James Cameron exempli‹es and, indeed, embodies the process through which history and memory reside within the black body. The frequency with which spectacular events occur exists as proof that we do not live within a “postrace” society. The everyday abuses of black folk continue with alarming regularity. In The Many Costs of Racism, Joe R. Feagin and Karyn D. McKinney assert that a person cannot be black within the United States and not experience some form of racism. They contend that ingrained racist attitudes and discriminatory actions have created “powerful domino effects on [black] families” in which black individuals “discover that racist actions have bankrupted them of all of their future possibilities.”6 A black job applicant may not get hired for the position for which she applied. Her unemployed status could affect the standard of living of her family, the possibility of her children attending college or university, her sense of self-esteem , and even her health. Devah Pager, a sociologist, tested this theory by recruiting black and white subjects to pose as applicants for the same job. She discovered that white applicants with a felony conviction were as likely to be contacted for interviews as a black applicant with a “clean” background. Pager concluded: “Being black in America today is just about the same as having a felony conviction in terms...