For My Players in The(ir) Hood(ies)

Although I enthusiastically advocate the show of support for Martin and his family by throwing on one’s favorite hoodie and snapping a picture, the act is marginal at best, as it simultaneously highlights yet mutes the core issue. Which is to say that it wasn’t simply the hoodie, but rather the black body inside of it that sparked the suspicion—not vice versa. After all, the KKK wears hoods; monks rock them. Geraldo’s son wants them for Christmas. It seems that no clothing can quiet the suspicion that black bodies inspire. Even our previous efforts to dress ourselves in the attire of respectability never thwarted the gaze—especially the one that helps aim the gun—from concluding that black people did not resemble and therefore stood outside of the body politic. Thus, the hoodie didn’t do it. Rather, the violence occurred because Zimmerman concluded that the body inside the hoodie did not belong inside gated spaces. Blackness is (the) outside, making those black bodies within exclusive regions vulnerable, and violently disconcerting to the ever powerful gaze of and/or view of one who more readily identifies with whiteness.