Typecasting Black Males
Black males in our country have been typecast to three main roles: the athlete, the entertainer, and the criminal. And because the media conditions our society to primarily see black males in these three roles, it creates an inability to see black males as anything other than those roles. What about the father? The family man? The son? The brother? The partner? The single man just trying to make it? The hardworking man? These identities are invisible and nonexistent to the conscience of many, both whites and non-whites.
When George Zimmerman met Trayvon Martin on that fateful night in Florida, I argue that his brain did not allow him to process Trayvon as a young male trying to get home. Potentially, Zimmerman could not see him as someone’s child. Zimmerman could not see him as human. Trayvon was a character, and he could only be playing one of three roles to which society had prescribed for black males: the athlete, the entertainer, or the criminal. That night, it was too late for Trayvon to be heading to the courts. While he had on a hoodie, typical athletic gear, it was unlikely in Zimmerman’s mind that Trayvon was about to participate in a sporting event. That night, because Trayvon wasn’t wearing flashy clothes, a fancy suit, or sparkling jewelry, I posit that in Zimmerman’s mind, Trayvon couldn’t be an entertainer. With two of the three possible characters that Trayvon could be playing eliminated, only one was left: the criminal. Zimmerman did not have the ideology, the wherewithal, or the consciousness to perceive Travyon Martin as anything but a criminal.
Our country has a racist history and present that we, as Americans, have yet to face. We have a hard time engaging in genuine, productive, and honest conversations about systemic racism. There are no quick fixes, obviously. And there are multiple places to start, and there are multiple programs and organizations that have been working to combat systematic racism. As an educational liberator, I want to push schools, school systems, and teachers to take an active role in helping to create multiple narratives of people from marginalized groups. A place to start is by helping educators find and use texts that feature people from those marginalized groups in non-stereotypical roles. This already happens in some schools, but it needs to be a common practice. I realize some might argue that all teachers are not trained to teach about socially conscience issues. Believe me, I know this all to well. Consequently, I’d like to counter that most teachers are at least trained to teach. So just teaching a text as a work of literature is a starting place, and at the very least, this opportunity gives students new schema for processing their understanding of individuals who are similar or different from them.
Conclusion
Systemic racism and prejudice in America will not simply be erased by requiring all schools and children to read texts where people from marginalized groups are portrayed in dynamic roles, but I truly believe that ignorance, ignorance of other people, of other cultures or other beliefs, is binding and dangerous. It is this ignorance that contributed to the death of Trayvon Martin. Thus we need to educate to liberate minds. Starting in schools and requiring teachers to teach more diverse texts is one way to help challenge those stereotypical roles for not only black males, but also all people from marginalized groups.
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