I’m interested in how some bodies are “in an instant” judged as suspicious, or dangerous, as
bodies to be feared, just because we can’t explain something it doesn't follow that we should be
afraid, some judgments in some circumstances can also have lethal consequences. There can
be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.
Look at today's society a real and present paranoia prevails. There’s a real suspicious guy. This
guy looks like he’s up to no good, he’s on drugs or something. This is further compounded by
racial profiling, he looks black. he’s wearing a dark hoodie, now he’s coming toward me. He’s
got his hands in his pockets, he’s a black male. Note the viscous slide: suspicious, up to no good, coming at me, looking black, a dark hoodie, wearing black, being black. The last statement makes an explicit racial overtone as to what we are all seeing right from the very beginning. We are seeing a Black man is already implied in the first description “a real suspicious guy.” Let me repeat: there can be nothing more dangerous to a body than the social agreement that that body is dangerous.
Are we as a society right to feel fear, because a stranger is a dark shadowy figure. I use the word “dark” deliberately here: it is a word that cannot be untangled from a racialised history. To use this word as if it can be disentangled from that history is to be entangled by that history. The racialisation of the stranger is not immediately apparent—it is disguised, we might say by the strict anonymity of the stranger, the one who after all, we are told from childhood, could be anyone. We witness from this example how this “could be anyone” is pointed: the stranger as a figure, points to some bodies more than others. This “could be anyone” thus only appears as an open possibility, stretching out into a horizon, in which the stranger reappears as the one who is always lurking in the shadows. Note; most films use this premise as a precursor to murderous intent. Note also that the perception of others is also an impression of others: to be made into a
stranger is to be blurred. I have since described racism as a blunt instrument, which is another
way of making the same argument. Stop and search, the so called “Suss law” for example, is a
methodology that makes this bluntness into a point: Stop! You are light brown with dark
features, Asian! Your carrying a rucksack You could be Muslim! You could be a terrorist! The
blurrier the figure of the stranger the more bodies can be caught by it. So long as a society we
recognise such injustices exist then we can become clearer when we legislate against it, and as
a consequence stop racial profiling and the demonisation of whole cultures from becoming the
norm.
© M.J. Sabine 2018.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Perhaps a small coincidence, or perhaps great minds think alike. But neither Zaar Riisberg nor Sabine had read each other's contributions. Not quite same theme - still, focus is the same. They both live in countries built on immigration and now watch in horror, as the rhetoric has taken a turn they had never expected. See Zaar Riisberg's offering on the same theme here.
