Includes bibliographical references (pages 259-270) and index.
Contents:
Coda: Through the eyes of a mother: reflections on the rites of passage of Black boyhood / Carol E. Henderson. Sarah Lucia Hoagland, and Anne Leighton -- Imagined communities: Whitopia and the Trayvon Martin tragedy / Maria del Guadalupe Davidson -- Indignity and death: philosophical commentary on White terror, Black death, and the Trayvon Martin tragedy / Stephen C. Ferguson II and John H. McClendon III -- No bigots required: what the science of racial bias reveals in the wake of Trayvon Martin / Phillip Abita Goff and L. Song Richardson -- Two forms of transcendence: justice and the problem of knowledge / Timothy Joseph Golden -- The irreplaceability of continued struggle / Lewis R. Gordon -- Dead Black man, just walking / William David Hart -- Distorted vision and deadly speech: enabling racial violence through paradox and script / Jennifer Harvey -- "Seeing Black" through Michel Foucault's eyes: "Stand Your Ground" laws as an anchorage point for state-sponsored racism / Devonya N. Havis -- Should Black kids avoid wearing hoodies? / Chike Jeffers -- Can we imagine this happening to a White boy? / Janine Jones -- A mother's pain: the toxicity of the systemic disease of devaluation transferred from the Black mother to the Black male child / Tracey McCants Lewis -- Social presence, visibility, and the eye of the beholder: a phenomenology of social embodiment / David Polizzi -- Trayvon Martin, racism, and the dilemma of the African American parent / E. Renée Sanders-Lawson and Bill E. Lawson -- Refusing blackness-as-victimization: Trayvon Martin and the Black cyborgs / João Costa Vargas and Joy A. James -- Politics, moral identity, and the limits of white silence / Samantha Vice -- Trayvon Martin and the tragedy of the new Jim Crow / Cynthia Willett and Julie Willett -- "What are you doing around here?": Trayvon Martin and the logic of Black guilt / Vanessa Wills -- Trayvon Martin: when effortless grace is sacrificed on the altar of the image / George Yancy -- Coda: Through the eyes of a mother: reflections on the rites of passage of Black boyhood / Carol E. Henderson.
Summary:
On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old African American male Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old biracial (Caucasian and Peruvian) male in Sanford, Florida. Martin was shot and killed within a gated community, where he was visiting his father, Tracy Martin, and the latter's fiancé. Martin, returning from a store where he had purchased a bag of Skittles and a bottle of Ice Tea, was unarmed. The encounter between Martin and Zimmerman proved fatal for Martin. As for Zimmerman, 45 days passed before he was charged with any crime. Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics attempts to capture what we, a critical cadre of scholars, think about this potentially volatile situation in the moment. The text addresses issues across various thematic domains, as we have delineated various concerns that are broad and yet relevant. Some of these themes include: how Trayvon Martin's killing might be depicted within the specifically historical context of racism, especially as some have compared Martin's situation to that of Emmett Till and Rodney King; how contemporary conceptions/perceptions and treatment of Black bodies and/or black embodiment from the historical perspective of white supremacy in the United States continue to function or not function in our contemporary moment; how we ought to think about the political and legal implications of the Trayvon Martin case within the context of the politics and laws that have historically informed and shaped black people's lives; how we should think critically about the historical exclusion of black bodies/embodiment in public space and the ramifications for the ways in which black people must navigate public space today; and, finally, how we should think about the ways in which the historical negative gendering of black girls and boys/black men and women, with respect to their white counterparts, in a white supremacist society, have impacted various intersections of race and gender in our contemporary setting. -- provided by publisher
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.