There can be no “proof” that George Zimmerman targeted Trayvon Martin because he was black. To frame the issue in this manner radically misunderstands the nature of the racial imagination as inaugurated by whiteness. The point is that both Zimmerman and the contemporary church and academy often operate within similar evaluative frameworks: the former judging the intentions of a black youth and the latter posing ethical and aesthetic theories and submitting non-Western cultural forms to those judgments. While I identify Zimmerman as “racist” in ways that many Christian theologians are not, it will be my task in this book to demonstrate the ways in which a similar racial imagination enlivens both overt racism and the dominance of many “white” forms of Christian community and theological inquiry.
Within rhetoric of ethics and beauty, the racial imagination has tended to align both criminality and immorality with blackness while aligning guardianship and goodness with whiteness. Zimmerman’s 911 call, in which he maintained that Martin was “a real suspicious guy” who “look[ed] like” he was “up to no good” illustrates this contention in an overt manner. “He’s got his hand in his waistband and he’s a black male” linked a judgment about Martin’s personal intentions with a categorization of Martin as a typological character: “These assholes they always get away.” This assessment was not primarily about Martin, but about what Martin represented. As a young black man in a hoodie walking through a gated community he became one of “these assholes.” Run as he might, Trayvon would be overtaken by Zimmerman, who had been warned by the 911 dispatcher not to follow Martin. What happened from there, while being hotly contested, is of little consequence to the “facts” of the case or their theological significance. It is indisputable that Martin ran away at the sight of Zimmerman (Zimmerman: “Shit he’s running”). The blood from Zimmerman’s head and nose suggests that he was beaten after he followed and accosted Martin. Why this fact changes anything is beyond comprehension. If the tables were turned, it is unthinkable that a white youth fighting back against a darker–skinned assailant would effectively be put on trial as an aggressor.10 It is likewise absurd to imagine that if a darker-skinned armed man had followed and confronted an unarmed teenager forty pounds and several shades lighter than him, he would ever have been acquitted based on a claim of “self-defense.”11 The essential point is that before the final altercation, Trayvon had already been tried and found guilty. The judgment of guilt was made the moment the descriptive glance of whiteness discerned Trayvon’s nefarious purposes as member of a suspicious type. That this judgment is theological in nature is evidenced by Zimmerman’s later reflection to Fox News’ Sean Hannity that “it was all God’s plan” for him to kill Trayvon and that he could neither “regret” nor “second-guess” anything he did that night.12
If, as I am claiming, an observatory stance which categorizes based upon a racialized hierarchy is at work in our collective Western imagination, the debate over whether Zimmerman was white or of white and Hispanic mixed racial ancestry is of little importance. As we have seen, the pervasiveness of the racial gaze is such that an African American pastor in New York can succumb to the same reflexive disdain for blackness. Zimmerman as white male or as Hispanic male can be interpreted as functioning within this social imaginary. While the orientation of whiteness was historically inaugurated by those of lighter skin, whose re-ordering of the world produced such a descriptive stance, all flesh has been forced into this manner of categorization. It has often been the case historically that those who are “nearest” to being white are those most effective in policing the lines of racial purity, as their own identity depends on it. The popular debate about the purity or lack thereof of Zimmerman’s ethnicity is indicative of the classificatory structure of whiteness. Much in the same way that naysayers declared that Obama the candidate was not truly “black” because his mother was white, defenders of Zimmerman were quick to point out that race could not have been involved in this case because Zimmerman was not truly “white.” This obsession with genetic makeup is reminiscent of sixteenth–century laws related to “blood purity” and drastically underestimates the force of the racial imagination. The racial imagination sees in lighter skin a potential for “civilized” behavior and in darker skin the existence of “savage” instincts. Within the racial gaze of whiteness, people are reflexively assigned a spot somewhere along this continuum. Those who ride the fence between racial “types” are often forced to decide with which group they will identify. In much the same way that lighter-skinned persons of African descent are often looked upon more favorably by both white society and black communities, and in much the same way that “mulatto” people historically survived in the marketplace by claiming to be of some other ethnicity,13 a black teenager named Trayvon Martin was measured on the scale of whiteness and found wanting.
Those who looked primarily for a clear sign of “racial animus” in this case were not looking deep enough. While it is certainly not the case that racism (as a matter of the will) has been eradicated, what I am describing here is the gaze that animates the ability to make racialized judgments. It is this gaze that is not primarily dependent on the conscious choice of an individual in a moment of hatred or discrimination, although it does serve to produce such animosity. It is this gaze that Jennings and Carter contend must be named, recognized, and resisted. Our contemporary public rhetoric, with its laudable emphasis on rooting out racism, is able to address only clearly defined acts of discrimination in an attempt to discern the prejudicial intentions of the perpetrator behind said bias. Paradoxically, the almost exclusive focus on racism as a matter of the will can distract from the underlying problem. This could be one reason why the racial judgment was purportedly so difficult for white persons to discern in the Martin/Zimmerman case. Yet for those who have experienced both sides of the objectifying gaze of judgment that assumes the transparency of the nonwhite body, the racial imaginary can be seen in the assumptions made about Trayvon’s intentions. Although the only language available to observers of these legal proceedings was the language of racism, many black and white Americans intuitively understood that there was more at stake in this case. I am making a hermeneutical judgment here. Yet I must stress that it is not a hermeneutical judgment that proceeds primarily from my “will”; it is a judgment that is inescapable because of the reality of being joined with those whose daily experience and historical reality directs and instructs me. Fundamentally,