an extroverted personality that won favor in the eyes of those with whom they came in contact. This seemingly serendipitous confluence was the exception and not the norm and took massive amounts of effort on the part of all involved to maintain, largely because it brought one into direct conflict with the principalities and powers.9 When Zimmerman was declared “not guilty,” I realized that I was at a loss regarding what I could now tell these young men. Could I tell them that if only they made sure to do the “right” thing society would protect them? How could they have any confidence that if they, like Trayvon, were walking home with a bag of Skittles and a soda, their lives would be viewed as being worthy of protection? Could I assure them that if they attempted to avoid conflict and yet were attacked, the trial of their murderer would not turn into a judgment based on society’s perception of their “character” and relative worth?
As I lay in bed that evening, I choked back tears and prayed that the grace of God would keep our local community and our country from taking ten steps backward in our ability to know and trust each other. While it was a foregone conclusion for my brothers and sisters in the black community that in some way every aspect of this tragedy had been about race, and while I took comfort in the strength I borrowed from them, I was not sure how I would be received the next morning. Zimmerman was acquitted on a Saturday night and Sunday morning I would be standing to preach before the joined black and white community that makes up the congregation which I pastor. I needed to put into words the sadness and outrage which we felt, while clinging to the hope that mutuality is possible within the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What happened was not what I expected. The building in which we worshiped was full and our members, black and white, were there and ready to worship. The African American members of the body experientially led our congregation, including those of a lighter hue, into an affirmation of God’s goodness in the face of injustice. Even after having lived and ministered in my community for years and after having availed myself of many autobiographical, theological, and sociological resources related to the struggle for black liberation upon the soil of the New World, I was existentially unprepared for the familiarity of the black worshipper with exalting the name of the Lord while walking through the valley of despair. While I was able to speak to the deep sense of betrayal we as a community were experiencing, the maintenance of an affirmation of God’s goodness did not rely primarily upon me. We had together formed a bond strong enough that we were able to be vulnerable with each other in the midst of our pain instead of alienating each other because of the perpetration of evil. I will never forget the heroic posture of my black brothers and sisters that morning as those of us who had not been on the receiving end of racial profiling were invited into the shared experience of lament and celebration.
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
