White People and Black Lives Matter: Ignorance, Empathy, and Justice by Luttrell Johanna C

Author:Luttrell, Johanna C. [Luttrell, Johanna C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy, Social, Political, History, Social History, Political Science, Public Policy, Social Policy, Ethics & Moral Philosophy, General, Economic Policy
ISBN: 9783030224882
Google: YfRlxQEACAAJ
Amazon: 3030224880
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2019-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

72 J. C. LUTTRELL

show a pattern of white appropriation that I myself, and other liberal

observers of black-led protest, tend to repeat. The strongest defense of

Schutz’ appropriation is that Schutz is a white artist talking to a white art world, reframing an iconic image from an earlier time to unsettle the myth of post-racialism in our current era.45 Under this argument, Schutz needs to appropriate black grief to deal with white liberal “grief” that the United States is not as far along the arc of moral universe as we thought we were when we elected Obama. That move, however, still domesticates the revolutionary power of Mrs. Till-Mobley’s own story. It centers white liberal

feelings and story, a sort of naïve surprise at how racism still works, over the outline of black mourning. The experience of white liberal political

shock is not the same experience as losing a child.

In appropriating black mourning, white people un-implicate ourselves.

White appropriation of black mourning is another form of appeal to white

innocence by way of virtue signaling. In contrast, Christopher Benson,

Till-Mobley’s biographer, calls white readers to respond to the story by

letting their own innocence die.46 The paradox is that, in observing and appropriating black grief, many liberal white observers believe they have

given up their innocence. They have admitted privilege, white guilt, or

complicity. But virtue signaling by way of admitting white guilt is not

helpful to the goals of racial justice movements. The goal is not that white people tend to admit complicity; it is for us to stop being complicit.

3.4 Recognizing agency, giving up the

idealized victiM

The perspective that sees Mrs. Till-Mobley or the Mothers of the

Movement as victims without agency perspective misunderstands victim-

ization. Diana Meyers outlines this misunderstanding in Victim’s Stories and Human Rights. Meyers is worried about two dominant paradigms of victimhood impeding our understanding of victims’ stories and action on

behalf of justice. We tend to see victims, Meyers writes, as either totally pathetic or completely heroic. The pathetic victim must be utterly helpless in the face of forces completely beyond her control, subjected to unspeakable suffering. The heroic victim has agency, but must express that agency with super-human virtues, always acting nonviolently and never expressing

despair or agony. These paradigms which demand the “super-humanity of

some, and the evacuated humanity of others”47, “encode polarized con-

3 HOW WHITE PEOPLE REFUSE TO UNDERSTAND BLACK MOURNING

73

ceptions of innocence that are out of keeping with well-established social practices regarding the acknowledgement of victims. Worse, they block

recognition of certain victims of human rights abuses.”48 These paradigms are also covers for respectability politics; they lay the groundwork for victim blaming. The listener carries around the criteria of absolute innocence to decode the “real” victims from the interlopers, and the criteria works as a tool of dismissal. The heroic, pathetic victim lens encourages judging

before caring. Meyers suggests that these paradigms be replaced by a more

reasonable and realistic conception of agency, the capacity for intelligent choice and action, where victims are given space for the full range of

human emotions—joy, courage, celebration, hope, anger, grief, lament,

and agony—sometimes at the same time, in the same person.

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