Protecting What's White: A New Look at Stand Your Ground Laws
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As I reflected on the creeping political bankruptcy of the Bay Area that gentrification has wrought, it occurred to me that her reaction should not be read as aberrant. In fact, in Oakland and other pockets of the Bay Area, there have been many recent examples of (mostly) white people in well-to-do communities endeavoring to protect their newly acquired property. In Temescal, new residents have hired private security firms to patrol the area. As reported in Colorlines, the private patrolmen often engage in tactics of racial profiling. And, if some people fear that their presence will lead to a rise in police brutality and alienation of residents of color, such concerns are not unfounded; at least one officer implied that the tactics of racial profiling will secure the area and “add value” to the surrounding environs, even as it displaces some of the long-standing residents.[1]
If I was surprised to realize that many white residents were working to secure, by any means necessary, their safety and the inviolability of their property, it was only because I had temporarily turned a blind eye to the reality that whiteness is property. This much was documented in the early 1990s by law professor Cheryl Harris in the landmark text, “Whiteness as Property.” Through an historical analysis of legislation that has been enacted over the past 200 years, Professor Harris demonstrated how the law has protected the rights of white citizens. This effectively made whiteness itself a right to be defended. The law has, moreover, “legitimized benefits that accrued to citizens just because they’re white.” [2]
If Professor Harris’s cogent analysis reveals how legislation and law enforcement prioritizes the rights and privileges of those deemed“white persons,” other critical race theorists have shown that the pressing need to safeguard whiteness against all presumed threats serves as a rationale for senseless violence against those not deemed white.[3] Indeed, the racial profiling, displacement, police brutality, and in some cases murder of (often) black persons, not just in Oakland (as in the case of Oscar Grant and many others), but nationwide, serve as critical examples of the seemingly justified violence against black people in the name of maintaining the sanctity of white privilege.[4]
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/21627-protecting-whats-white-a-new-look-at-stand-your-ground-laws