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Scared White Men: What Anxious Masculinity Has To Do With The Death Of Trayvon Martin

By Hugo Schwyzer

March 20, 2012

Hugo Schwyzer weighs in on the recent shooting of Trayvon Martin and points to white men's long history of fearing black men as the root cause.

I thought about starting this essay with a stock phrase, saying that the now-infamous February 26 shooting of Trayvon Martin has “reopened an old wound.” But in reading about the death of Martin—a black Florida teenager armed with nothing more threatening than a bag of Skittles, gunned down by a white man who was the self-styled captain of a neighborhood watch committee—I’ve realized that you can’t “reopen” a wound that has never been allowed to close. Though the case strikes many chords about the troubled history of racial violence in America, one in particular stands out: white men’s enduring anxiety about black males. If we want to comprehend why so many black boys and men continue to die at white male hands, we need to understand the desperately fragile state of white masculinity.

Three weeks after Martin’s death under highly suspicious circumstances, the man who shot him has not been charged with a crime. George Zimmerman, the gunman, had a habit of racially profiling visitors to the gated community in Sanford for which he served as a self-appointed guardian. As the Miami Herald reported recently, the Sanford police department has a troubling recent history of its own, consistently downplaying cases of white-on-black violence. Of course, that pattern is hardly limited to one Florida town or even to the south alone; a Google search using names like James Craig Anderson, Amadou Diallo, or Emmett Till will provide a handful of variations on an old theme. There are countless others.

Since African slaves were first brought to what is now the United States, white men have gone to extraordinary lengths to rob black men of their dignity and their humanity. As Michael Kimmel discusses in his magisterial history of masculinity, Manhood in America, 19th century whites were profoundly fearful of black male sexuality and power. Slavery explicitly denied to black males the traditional hallmarks of masculine power. Manhood, as Kimmel points out, is defined by what it isn’t; the he-man is traditionally the one with the fewest feminine characteristics. In a society where only white men could own property (including their own wives and children), black males took on the legal status of women. And thus black men could be “boys” but never “men," “uncles” but never “fathers.” 

With the end of slavery, black men (but not black women) received the same property, voting, and marital rights that white men had exclusively enjoyed. Whites worried openly and often about emancipated male former slaves rising up in bloody, retaliation for their long history of emasculation. Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were founded on the assumption that white women and children needed protection from newly liberated and predatory black men eager to avenge the sexual outrages committed by whites against their own female loved ones during the slave era.

As it turned out, the danger posed was entirely a figment of a guilty white imagination. White women weren’t in any greater danger after the Civil War, but black men were. The era of lynchings, in which black men were tortured to death by mobs (usually with law enforcement acquiescence or active participation) began at the end of Reconstruction. As the murders of Anderson or James Byrd remind us, these brutal racialized killings are hardly a thing of the distant past. 

Contemporary white male masculinity has a complex relationship with black men. One of the most popular and enduring of genres in amateur pornography features white men filming their wives and girlfriends having sex with stereotypically well-endowed black men. In that genre, black men seem to be agents of white men’s sexual humiliation—except that the white man is invariably the one to arrange the whole scenario and film the whole scene. It’s still the openly cuckolded husband’s fantasy that unfolds, one in which black men are always players, never directors.  

As with porn, so with sports. The highly paid black athlete may seem a fearsome exemplar of masculine power, but television viewers are regularly reminded that he’s coached (and in a professional sense, owned) by men who are almost always white. Black men are welcome to fulfill white male fantasies on the basketball court—and in certain instances, in the bedroom as well. They are less welcome in the boardroom. (Judging by data from the 2008 election, for many southern working class white men, they are decidedly unwelcome in the White House.) And young black men like Trayvon Martin are absolutely unwelcome when they enter predominately white communities without permission of the self-appointed gatekeepers.

During halftime of the NBA all-star game (whether that detail is significant or not is up to others to decide), George Zimmerman reported Trayvon Martin to a 911 operator, and against instructions, followed the candy-laden teenager until they had some sort of violent confrontation. An audio-tape of their encounter includes frantic screaming suddenly ended by a gunshot. Zimmerman claims that the screams were his and that it was he who was under attack; he says he needed to kill Martin in self-defense. 

Whatever happened on February 26, we can say with certainty that Zimmerman’s account follows a classic American narrative. A white male agent of the law confronts a black man; black man becomes violent, white man is “forced” to use deadly force to save his own life. The story plays on the classic racist assumption that black men are always physically stronger than whites. Because of that supposed physical superiority, the gun becomes “regrettably necessary” as a great equalizer. Too few white people question the familiar reasoning.    

As Prof. David J. Leonard points out in a brilliant essay, millions of Americans learned the names of two black men this month: Joseph Kony and Trayvon Martin. Both became famous because white men labeled them as evils from which the world needed saving. The parallel goes further. Jason Russell, the head of the Invisible Children charity that started the viral Kony2012 campaign, and George Zimmerman each played essentially the same part: that of white male savior, protecting Ugandan children and Florida suburbanites from the real or imagined dangers presented by two black men. 

While Russell had a bizarre (and notably sexualized) fall from grace last week, Zimmerman remains free. The black men they demonized have had different fates as well; while Kony survives somewhere in central Africa, Martin has been buried by his grieving family. Whether Trayvon’s family finds justice depends on whether prosecutors in Florida can find a lens other than that of anxious white masculinity through which to look. If history is any guide, we have little reason to believe that they will.

Hugo Schwyzer has taught history and gender studies at Pasadena City College since 1993, where he developed the college's first courses on Men and Masculinity and Beauty and Body Image. A writer and speaker as well as a professor, Hugo lives with his wife, daughter, and six chinchillas in Los Angeles. Hugo blogs at his eponymous website and co-authored the recent autobiography of supermodel Carré Otis, Beauty, Disrupted.

Photo credit werthmedia/Flickr

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  • Ben
    04/29/12 at 05:59 PM #

    The entire premise of this article is absurd. Zimmerman wasn’t even white! He was hispanic.

    Such a simple fact overlooked, all for what? So you can write an article about how white people are still racist? The true racism seems to lie elsewhere. Maybe when we start focusing on our commonalities rather than our differences will racism start to dissolve. The “classic American narrative” to me doesn’t seem to be one of racism, but one of acceptance and integration. Indeed, the melting pot may be the most classic explanation of the essence of America and this essay on it’s very face seems to do little to further that ideal.

  • Nick Reece
    04/01/12 at 09:09 AM #

    This article was racist in itself, black men are physically sup to white men?? wtf is that about? This is another example of why the US is going downhill. It couldn’t have been because the kid was trying to break into someones house, it HAD to be a racial thing. Most people ARE anti-white nowadays, and it’s sad. But hey, every man for himself now right? Just worry about yourself and your family.

  • Elic
    03/27/12 at 01:12 AM #

    im pretty sure there are more black on white crime in america, then white on black crime

  • Anonymous
    03/23/12 at 08:00 AM #

    This is article is racism disguised as an op-ed.

    1. Zimmerman is hispanic. Not white.
    2. To call southern men racists because they didn’t vote for Obama is ridiculous. White men PUT Obama in the white house. But many of us have values that do not resonate with the Democratic party.
    3. There is no fear of “black sexuality”, whatever that means. Referencing some porn fetish of a minority of men to make that point, well you may as well suggest that all men are secretly gay since same-sex porn is always one of the top genres.

    In short, your logic is awful, and when you do it to the point of racism, it is even worse.

    This is a terrible article.

  • mdottwo
    03/22/12 at 03:10 AM #

    This incident a model for the conflict between hispanics and African Americans? Many, many hispanics want to identify as white, and bring with them a caste mindset from the hispanic nations from which they hail. Many of them consider themselves superior to African Americans. And even worse, many of them have openly stated that they intend to displace black Americans as our nation’s “preferred minority.”

    Black paid Judas goat politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been given the assignment to forge blacks and hispanics into a single ideological voting block. Dear black people wake up, hispanics are not your natural ally; do not go for it. They have everything to win (hispanic foreigners’ employment rate is higher than ours), and we have everything to lose. The Democrat paid church-less reverends will show up in Florida to make sure that no public rift between hispanics and black Americans is openly voiced during this whole debacle, because the Dem Party’s goals supersede the sensibilities of black Americans. That why the media has kept referring to Zimmerman as white, in order to direct black anger away from hispanics. Anyone can clearly see that the man is hispanic. For centuries we have had home grown slaughterers of black boys and men, now we are importing hispanic peasants with a black blood-thirst. A California court ruled that Mexican gangs were systematically murdering black people to ethnically cleanse neighborhoods. Over the past 30 years, more than half of California’s black population has relocated to other states. In Chicago warnings have been issued about hispanic gang initiations that involve abducting and gang raping black women.

    African Americans, this is the moment to let hispanics and all politicians know that we owe them nothing, and refuse to be further manipulated by them. We should most emphatically inform everyone, be they black, white, hispanic or other that we will no longer put up with their murderous antics towards black people(Google the history of hispanic on black murders), and that we will hound Zimmerman until he is put behind bars.

  • davev
    03/22/12 at 03:07 AM #

    Alyssa-
    Well put.

    Hugo-
    The facts in this case don’t support your hypothesis. Zimmerman is a “white” man in the same way that Obama is “black.” You don’t have to be white to be a racist. Anybody who knows anything about gangs can tell you that. In LA F13 was attempting to “cleanse” blacks from “their” neighborhood. They didn’t just kill rival gang members, they killed random black people too.

  • Erika
    03/21/12 at 01:42 PM #

    Several people have said there is no evidence that Trayvon was violent. The point that is missed is that he would no doubt have felt threatened by some grown man following and then chasing and physically confronting him. It would have been okay and within his rights to become violent after he already tried to remove himself from the situation. No doubt black children and adults who have found themselves in new territory with an irate white man bearing down on them have definitely felt that adrenaline kick in. Historically that scenario has never ended well for us.

    And @Chris if you have to tell people that you are hispanic (like Zimmerman) and they can’t tell themselves, you are free from the racial profiling and discrimination that Trayvon was subject to because he can’t change the color of his skin. Thus Zimmerman is considered white and society treats him as white. But there are black hispanics who share Trayvon’s skin color but speak Spanish. When most Americans see them they just think they are black until they disabuse you of that notion.

  • Hugo Schwyzer
    03/20/12 at 03:06 PM #

    Lots here to which to respond but only time to clarify that the classic American narrative refers not to the truth of what happened but the story that Zimmerman tells. I agree, no evidence Trayvon was violent!

  • mango
    03/20/12 at 02:05 PM #

    @Chris 03/20/12 at 01:21 PM

    One can be BOTH white and Latino. Latino = white, Black or Mixed Race

  • Chris
    03/20/12 at 01:21 PM #

    Trayvon Martin’s murderer was a Latino man (of mixed racial background), not a white man. That is not an insignificant detail. The old narrative of white male anxiety needs to get updated for the USA of 2012, a USA that is no longer only in black and white.

  • Reader
    03/20/12 at 12:57 PM #

    The only part of this I take issue with is your reference to “a classic American narrative.” Not sure this qualifies — I don’t think we know that Trayvon Martin became violent. Even if he had, when you have a gun and your opponent has an iced tea, I think it’s safe to assume you’ve got the upper hand. Further violence not necessary.

  • Anti-Intellect
    03/20/12 at 12:17 PM #

    This piece is a perfect example of what it means to use one’s social privilege in the service of social justice. Hugo Schywzer need not have written this post. He could have remained in his privileged location as a White and a Male, and merely watched this tragedy unfold from a distance. But he chose to way into the fray, to shed light on a history that is rarely looked at in an illuminating way. There are far too many White people, of all genders, who want to remain ignorant to the fact that there is a very clear history of racialized violence in this country. This is a story about racial violence, but it is also a story about masculine violence, and I am glad that Hugo brought his talents to this story. I am reminded of Amy Denver, the White indentured servant in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, who assisted the Black runaway slave girl in her escape to freedom. She could have, if we are thinking conventionally, have turned the girl in for a reward, but she didn’t. Instead the White Amy and the Black Sethe work together to not only secure the future of the Black unborn child inside of Sethe, but to give a testament to the fact that race need not mean that communion of like minded people is not possible. Thank you Hugo. Trayvon’s name will not be in vain.

  • Alyssa
    03/20/12 at 12:06 PM #

    Hugo, as always, I love your take, even when I have nuances of disagreement. I agree 100% with what you said here, but would add a few things.

    Being “white” has remained, whether we discuss it or not, the goal. Being accepted, conquering, becoming as successful – or more – than our oppressors. A pretty common theme in repression reversal. Not to be a white man, but to be what they are and have what they have.

    Zimmerman was Hispanic – which may be closer to white than black, but is still not white. And in Florida there is still a lot of strife between Hispanics and whites and blacks….. So you have a Hispanic man who is in a security position in a mixed community. By being the protector he can be one with the “dominant” culture and fight a common enemy. I do not say this to suggest that he was intentionally or knowingly racist, I think it’s entirely possible that he’s not. But that these undercurrents in our perception of achievement drive us more than we think.

    “I must protect this group, this thing, this goal, this safety this…….” It’s an almost laudable goal. But when you throw in even the slightest about of institutionalized racism (which I do think must have been present in order for him to perceive Trayvon Martin as a threat) then things get amped up.

    Why did he look at this INNOCENT kid, walking back from the store with his Skittles and Tea as a threat?

    You also have to factor in the machismo that is also a part of the Hispanic culture. That they must be stronger, tougher etc…. This is part and parcel of what you’re were discussing. That we have taught men that they have to be tough and protectors and be able to handle everything. Are we making them hyper-vigilant and hypo-sensitive?

    I’m not being as articulate as I intended, but I’ve been thinking about this for days now – and have not yet found the words. I think it’s impossible to remove racism from this equation, but not in the simple and overt ways that people want it used. It is not “I hate black people,” it is “race has been used as a tool and now I don’t even realize what it has done to me.” Especially when you look at achieving a coveted place at the head of the table, which is still owned and filled by white men.