thoughts on Rachel Jeantel's testimony
Jul. 1st, 2013 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lotesseI hadn't watched any of the footage of Rachel Jeantel's testimony or cross-examination until today, because I've been finding the proceedings of the Zimmerman trial unbearably sickening, frustrating, appalling - mainly because folk keep acting like it would be less surprising for Trayvon Martin to have been the aggressor in his own murder than it would be for a demonstrably proven paranoid racist to have killed a Black child, as so many have done before him. But I've been reading a lot about Rachel Jeantel, because media attacks on young fat Black women tend to be something that come up in spaces that I frequent. The reason why I finally opened up a YouTube tab to listen to her speak was that so many of the pieces defending her, or parsing the attacks on her, have included still photos of her, and every single time I've found the look in her eyes absolutely arresting. I know it's not entirely helpful to fight accusations of ugliness with assertions of beauty - it shouldn't matter what Rachel Jeantel looks like, and even if she were ugly as sin it wouldn't change Zimmerman's guilt or innocence - but she's not. She's so beautiful, with her hair shining and her eyes blazing and her mouth held firm. She's so beautiful.
I was surprised, though, by what I heard when I started watching video of her. From both troll comments and feminist editorials, I'd gotten the impression of a loud, angry, even maybe rude woman - and because I support her right to be all those things, considering, I'd been ready to cheer her for it. But she was calm and soft-spoke and sure. Angry, yes, but cool angry; angry that knows what's true and isn't going to be flustered. It's the kind of anger I aspire to find in myself; I think a lot of the reason I tend to avoid conflict is that I don't trust myself to control my anger, and when I get angry I get shrill and tearful and other things that make people not take you seriously. She didn't speak unclearly. It was more like Zimmerman's defense lawyer didn't want to hear what she had to say, when he made her repeat herself - or that he wanted her to appear to have spoken unclearly. And, lord, when he asked her if characterizing Zimmerman as a cracker was a racial remark, again and again - that wasn't rudeness, that was knowledge. It is not a racial remark. It is a linguistic reminder of some of our nastier history, when whites - often poor ones - physically abused enslaved Black people. That happened. It was real. And that history still impacts us today, because of course it does! Think how long a simple family disagreement can drag on for! The kind of horror that has been American race relations is not the kind of thing that can be cleared up in a few short decades. "Cracker" reminds us of our place; unlike the n-word, though, "cracker" is an epithet we earned ourselves, because that really truly was our place, one that white America chose. And the murder of Black children has been a tactic of crackers for a long, long time.
When I heard him say that, about "cracker" being a racial slur, I yelled and punched my couch until I whopped my thumb on its arm, and I'm neither a Black woman nor a close friend of a murdered boy who had to listen to him die on my phone. I admire her restraint, and I'm so impressed and inspired by the cool certainty of her understanding.
I was surprised, though, by what I heard when I started watching video of her. From both troll comments and feminist editorials, I'd gotten the impression of a loud, angry, even maybe rude woman - and because I support her right to be all those things, considering, I'd been ready to cheer her for it. But she was calm and soft-spoke and sure. Angry, yes, but cool angry; angry that knows what's true and isn't going to be flustered. It's the kind of anger I aspire to find in myself; I think a lot of the reason I tend to avoid conflict is that I don't trust myself to control my anger, and when I get angry I get shrill and tearful and other things that make people not take you seriously. She didn't speak unclearly. It was more like Zimmerman's defense lawyer didn't want to hear what she had to say, when he made her repeat herself - or that he wanted her to appear to have spoken unclearly. And, lord, when he asked her if characterizing Zimmerman as a cracker was a racial remark, again and again - that wasn't rudeness, that was knowledge. It is not a racial remark. It is a linguistic reminder of some of our nastier history, when whites - often poor ones - physically abused enslaved Black people. That happened. It was real. And that history still impacts us today, because of course it does! Think how long a simple family disagreement can drag on for! The kind of horror that has been American race relations is not the kind of thing that can be cleared up in a few short decades. "Cracker" reminds us of our place; unlike the n-word, though, "cracker" is an epithet we earned ourselves, because that really truly was our place, one that white America chose. And the murder of Black children has been a tactic of crackers for a long, long time.
When I heard him say that, about "cracker" being a racial slur, I yelled and punched my couch until I whopped my thumb on its arm, and I'm neither a Black woman nor a close friend of a murdered boy who had to listen to him die on my phone. I admire her restraint, and I'm so impressed and inspired by the cool certainty of her understanding.
no subject
Date: 2013-07-02 01:53 pm (UTC)