“Not in This Neighborhood!” A Reflection on Race and Rights in the Wake of the Jordan Davis Murder Trial

“Not in This Neighborhood!”  A Reflection on Race and Rights in the Wake of the Jordan Davis Murder Trialby Tikia Hamilton | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The verdict for the murder of Jordan Davis has now been handed to us.  Among a few of us, there is some relief that the child-killer, Michael Dunn will not be allowed to prance away from this murder scot-free.  Given the travesty of justice that occurred when jurors determined that George Zimmerman was acting in self-defense when he surveiled, confronted and shot Trayvon Martin in February, 2012, many African-Americans feel their rights as citizens have been half-vindicated by the jury’s decision to hold young Jordan’s murderer accountable on three counts of second-degree attempted murder and one count of firing into an occupied vehicle. For a great many others, the inability or the unwillingness of the jurors to convict Dunn of first-degree murder reminds us that, if you fit a certain racial profile, despite historic laws that are supposed to guarantee your citizenship, you still possess no rights that white society is bound to respect.
Generally speaking, African-Americans and other minority groups operate with the belief that a right does not become ours until it is a right denied, and even still we are frequently left hanging by the rope. Yet, to the casual observer, white people seem to have an altogether different understanding of their  American citizenship than we do. And it is this difference that explains so much about race and rights in our culture. For example, among friends and family, we often joke about the weird sense of entitlement white people demonstrate on a day to day basis. 
Whether they are beckoned by large red stop signs that grant them the right of way against moving autos, or whether they are traipsing along in car lanes that have been transformed for the benefit of cyclists who seem to think they are autos, whites appear to negotiate the world on terms that are unfamiliar to many others.  Perhaps most egregious of all are the late night joggers, who appear downright oblivious to danger. “That’s how people get killed,” black folks are known to express incredulity over the nonchalant way young white women run along half-lit streets.  Admittedly, this behavior is often downright annoying.  This is mainly because many others of us know of no such privilege.
A few weeks ago, during jury duty, I was forced to consider, for the first time, whether my way of thinking as an African-American citizen should be much more of a cause of concern than those white people who seem to approach life in such a carefree manner.  The trial involved the case of one young African-American man who randomly attacked unsuspecting white men in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, D.C.  In the first instance, the alleged victim suffered an attack from behind, as he was walking into a corner store, causing this pretty sizeable blonde man to remark to concerned shoppers, almost comically,  “That guy just kicked my ass!”  The next altercation involved the punching in the face of a more slender white male, who apparently did not provide the desired response when asked by the assailant whether his wife, who accompanied him that evening, was, in fact, “his girl.”
The final incident occurred when, in an alleged attempt to prevent the assailant from doing greater harm, a 67 year old man yelled out, “Not in this neighborhood!” Of course, upon initially hearing one of the earlier witnesses describe this event, I fully expected some embittered segregationist to emerge on the stand and from without the pages of southern history to testify on behalf of sacred white rights. Actually, the bushy-eyed man appeared like some bald, goofy yet affable Dr. Seuss character, unlike Dunn and Zimmerman, whose sense of entitlement obliviated their need to appear at least somewhat contrite in the aftermath of their racist killing sprees.  
In contrast, the 67 year old man seemed rather disaffected by his altercation with a black man forty years his junior. Although the scuffle eventually left him with a broken tibia and a titanium rod permanently lodged in his leg, he was not willing to assert with 100% certainty that the young African-American man had been responsible for his injuries, the direct result of having tripped backwards over his dog.  Notwithstanding his sense of entitlement as a quasi-community watchman who had resided in the neighborhood since 1979, it became difficult for me to find fault with a guy who had to be somebody’s grandfather. Certainly, he and the other crime victims had every right to be kept safe from these seemingly random attacks, rights that we, as jurors, were bound to protect.
Now, as an historian who is deeply immersed in the history of American race relations, and in the nation’s capital in particular, I know that, more often than not, an assertion of white rights comes at the expense of all others.  As in the case of George Zimmerman murdering Trayvon Martin, the right of an individual to run a “suspicious looking” black kid out of “his” neighborhood,” based simply on the fact that, by virtue of his appearance, he does not belong, is reflective of a type of racist discourse that underlay the use of racial covenants and redlining, well after the Supreme Court rule against these segregationist practices in 1948.  Zimmerman’s right to “stand his ground” against a seventeen year old boy’s dogged determination to protect himself against his assailant (who might has just as well have been a mugger or a pedophile) becomes nearly indisputable amid a jury of Zimmerman’s peers. This proves especially true when the “suspicious looking” teen is shot dead before he, too, can claim the right of self-defense.
Similarly, with regard to Michael Dunn’s decision to shoot into a van full of unarmed teenagers, the defendant’s right to be free of the nuisance of so-called “loud music” is tantamount to his right as a white man to be free of an even greater nuisance, a.k.a black people, whom society readily associates with “thug culture.” (This, despite the more than visible purveyance of said-culture among at least two generations of white Americans.) But, in finding sanctuary in Florida’s “stand your ground” law, Dunn and Zimmerman are merely drawing upon a history of laws that have been designed to uphold white supremacy.
For example, in the post-Emancipation period, African-Americans quickly sought to avail themselves of newly derived citizenship rights, which guaranteed them freedom from slavery, uncompensated labor,  “equal protection under the law,” and the undisputed right of black men to vote. Fearing their rights were in competition with that of African-Americans, however, everywhere in the South, white supremacists surreptitiously set about enacting local ordinances, known infamously as the Black Codes. These measures limited property ownership among blacks, circumscribed their physical movement, imprisoned the unemployed, prevented their ability to testify against whites, and, among other restrictions, denied them of the first amendment right to bear arms.  
The subsequent civil rights laws Radical Reconstructionists enacted as a way to stem the tide of southern political aggression yielded a few victories among African-Americans who were determined to assert their citizenship and their humanity. In fact, such as the case of the first black senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, a few of these individuals we often celebrate during Black History Month.  Nevertheless, the failure of the federal government to protect African-Americans from racist retrenchment soon became evident during a period known as “Redemption” in the Southern states.    Via exclusionary laws designed by white supremacists to halt black progress, African-Americans were removed from public office and once again denied their voting rights, events that would militate against the ability of blacks to seek redress against white racist attacks, and during the subsequent decades in which the lynching of blacks by white men and women would reach their peak. It was as if “The slave went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again toward slavery,” W.E.B. DuBois remarked of the period.
During my time on the jury, I was particularly struck by the prosecuting attorney’s primary argument—that each of us has the absolute right to exist in society free of the fear of eminent danger, no matter his or her background.  A man has the right to visit his neighborhood market to purchase a bottle of wine (or iced tea), no matter if it is 9:00 am or 9:00 pm, which was when these alleged attacks occurred. While making his way home, whether in person or via cell phone, a young man has the right to chat freely with “his girl” along a relatively unpopulated street, or so we presume. And, she has the right to feel protected by her guy, as the prosecuting attorney reminded us, in a way that forced me to place aside my understanding of how, historically, claims of chivalry often served as the rallying cry for lynch mobs who were asserting their rights to protect white womanhood.  Additionally, my feelings about Zimmerman and Dunn aside, I had to concede that, foolhardy though his actions may have appeared, the elderly Samaritan remained entitled to intercede on a stranger’s behalf, without the fear that doing so will immediately implicate him as a racist. “That seemed a bit reckless,” one white juror shared with me. “I don’t know. I think I would want someone to do the same for me had I been in that situation,” I replied, though my experiences as an African-American woman have caused me to regard such a statement as wishful thinking on my part.
Still, the rights-based discourses which functioned as the bread and butter of the prosecutor’s argument were not without additional historic precedent. The reality is, among white citizens who have always felt themselves trapped in a Lockean struggle to maintain their livelihood against the whims of liberal policy-making, state and federal laws have greatly aided their narrow-minded pursuits. From the landmark “separate, but equal” ruling the Supreme Court handed down in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 to federal housing programs that helped fuel “ white flight” to the suburbs throughout the U.S.(and not just in the South), especially in the wake of the Supreme Court rulings that outlawed racial covenants (via Shelley vs. Kramer in 1948) and ended de jure segregation in schools (in Brown v. Board in 1954), the right of whites citizens to exist in society free of the fear of “eminent danger” has always been protected.
And yet, much of the Black Freedom Struggle has been predicated on the belief that our rights as citizens of this diverse American nation need not be in competition with each other. Thus, the 1963 March on Washington was not simply about locking hands with the races, while envisioning a day where we could all just get along. Like the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1965, the March was, in fact, a mandate that the black right to be and do be granted equal consideration under the law. Or, so we are led to believe…
Having just celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington last year, we should all feel that the right to be and the right to exist freely and apart from unwarranted violence is our undisputed birthright as American citizens, whether black, brown and/or living in gang-infested neighborhoods in Chicago or in states like Florida, where white civilians feel that not only is it their right, but their civic duty to function as the modern-day “paddy-rollers.”   And when and where these privileges and immunities become threatened, we should, all of us, feel that we possess the right of legal redress. At least, it is by this conviction that I stood as a juror who tried my best to remain free of my professional  and personal biases as an historian and member of marginalized community who knows better.
The problem is, now that the trial is over, now that the Zimmerman is free and Dunn’s fate remains yet undetermined, I am haunted by the reminder that, while the judicial system always seems to bend and adjust itself to accommodate the rights of citizens who have long existed as a favorite of the laws, I fear that this will never be the case for African-Americans.  For this reason, I, and many other African-Americans will continue to find it extremely difficult to rid ourselves of the notion that, right of way or not, if you walk out into the street against traffic, your ass is gonna get hit. And, if you jog alone along some dimly lit street, rest assured, your ass is going to be attacked. (And, chances are, even if you’re young, black and male, if you don’t just stay your ass in the house, you might even run the risk of being convicted of some crime you did not commit, such as attacking those very some joggers who feel so greatly entitled that they are willing to risk life and limb to prove what most of us already know).
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Tikia K. Hamilton is a PhD candidate in the History Department at Princeton University. A Chicago native and former educator in New York City, her research focuses on race and public education in Washington, D.C., where she currently resides. You can follow her on Facebook or on Twitter at @TikiaKHamilton