Of Murders and Marches, Notes on (some) Women Marching: Black Women, Dangerous Men, and the Terms of Engagement

On December 13, 2016 Sade Dixon was seated at her parents’ dining room table eating. The December dinner marked a difficult moment in Dixon’s life. Just three days earlier she moved back in with her parents as a result of experiencing physical abuse at the hands of Markeith Loyd. Before the physical altercation Dixon and Loyd dated for three months; and Loyd, within that time span, ate dinner with twenty-four year old Dixon and her family at the same table that she now sat at as a both a victim of domestic abuse (which resulted in her needing a tetanus shot as she was bit on the back by Loyd in the process) and as an expecting mother—she was two months pregnant with her and Loyd’s child.

As Dixon sat at the dinner table with her family, her cellphone rang; she excused herself from the table. On the other end of the nighttime phone call was Loyd. Responding to his phone call, Dixon met him outside shortly after he arrived in his 1992 red Buick Regal. Soon thereafter Sade Dixon’s brothers, Dominique and Ronald, heard arguing outside of their parent’s home. What was a peaceful night soon turned tumultuous and deadly. As Ron opened the door to check on his sister shots rang out, by the time Dixon’s mother, Stephanie Dixon-Daniels, and brother, Dominique, made it to the door of the home both Sade and Ronald were lying on the cement—both suffering gunshot wounds from 11.40 caliber bullets. A short time later at Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC) Sade Dixon and her child were pronounced dead at 9:16 p.m.—just thirteen minutes after a 911 call was made in an attempt to save her life. Dixon’s brother, Ronald, was listed in critical condition suffering gunshot wounds in his chest and his left and right thigh.

Loyd, who escaped the scene, was charged by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office with two counts of first degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault with a firearm, and one count of attempted murder. Loyd’s evasion of Orange County Sheriffs and Orlando Police was noticeably marked by Black residents of Orlando, Florida. As I touched down in Orlando on December 15, 2016, Loyd still remained at large in the city. There was no reward offered for clues leading to his capture. There was no urgency to find Loyd; daily life in the city continued as normal. Dixon’s murder was seemingly simply representative of the many shootings and murders Orlando experienced nearly daily: no one in authority seemed to care, and as a result, Orlando took on the name “Warlando” and/or “Chicago South.” These new monikers for the city were not just hearsay among Orlando residents and other Floridians. The FBI released a report which revealed in the first 6 months of 2016 “the City Beautiful” experienced the second highest murder rate in the United States at 24.21%, while Chicago recorded a murder rate of 11.62% in the same time span. While Chicago did not make the top 10, Orlando came in second to St. Louis, which recorded a murder rate of 27.75%

In the City Beautiful, two days before Dixon was murdered, Kendra Lewis, another Black woman, was murdered by DeShawn Miller and Jayvon Joachin (both Black men like Loyd) as she sat in the front seat of her car with her 5 year old daughter beside her. By the time the sun went down on the same day gun violence in Orlando struck again. This time, 47 year old Jeffery Webb was murdered at a local 7-11 convenience store and 4 others were taken to ORMC and Arnold Palmer Hospital for their injuries.

The City of Orlando, once heralded the tourist capital of the world, was (and still is) in a crisis. Black residents of the city were (and are) being killed off and seemingly there is no intentional and concentrated effective assistance from law enforcement to help. Emblematic of the chasm between effective solutions from city leadership and the epidemic in Orlando’s Black community, a local news channel ended the coverage of the shooting regarding Webb in this way: “no arrests have been made. No other details are available.” In all of this, Loyd, who murdered Sade Dixon and shot her brother Ronald, remained at large.

Many Black residents of Orlando marked the difference in response to White areas of Orlando verses Black. Of the many people that I spoke to in Orlando, many expressed that had this type of violence happened to a white woman or one of law enforcement’s own, police would have found the perpetrator immediately. These sentiments turned out to be prescient.

On January 9, four days after I left Orlando, Markeith Loyd struck again. This time he gruesomely murdered Debra Clayton, who like Sade and Kendra, was a Black woman. The way in which Loyd killed Clayton is horrifically gruesome (so I will not detail that here). A few Black residents of Orlando offered the critique that had law enforcement taken the murder of Sade Dixon seriously and aggressively searched for Loyd, the murder of Debra Clayton could have been prevented. Immediately following Clayton’s death police launched a city and county-wide man hunt. A significant reward was offered for the capture of Loyd. Many enforcement tactics were employed to find him, among them: police cars flooded Orlando streets, helicopters took to the sky, cellphone location services were employed, Loyd was declared armed and dangerous, and news outlets offered coverage without ceasing. Eight days after the murder of Debra Clayton, and thirty-five days after Dixon’s death, Loyd was captured by the Orlando Police Department. Interestingly, there was a noticeable difference between Sade, Kendra, and Debra that prompted the swiftness of law enforcement. Debra Clayton was a Lieutenant with the Orlando Police Department (she was promoted posthumously). In other words, (the primarily male) Orlando law enforcement declined to act with urgency until a form a maleness (the State via the badge) was mapped onto a Black woman. The deaths of Sade, Kendra, and Debra help us to understand that Loyd’s capture was not about bringing about justice to Sade’s and Debra’s family, but was about vindicating the State. As officers worked around the clock to find Loyd, an Orange County Deputy Sheriff, Norman Lewis, was killed in the process when his motorcycle collided with a moving vehicle. Many things can be gleaned from Orlando’s relationship with its Black citizens, however, one take away is clear: in the City Beautiful Black life is disposable.

Interestingly, just over a week after the death of Debra and approximately a month after the deaths of Sade and Kendra, women took to the streets of Washington, D.C. and other large cities across the U.S. for the Women’s March. The proximity of these murders, the Women’s March, and the election of Donald Trump are not coincidental. The deaths of Sade Dixon, Kendra Lewis, Debra Clayton, Jeffery Webb and Norman Lewis unveil the deep bias of State and activists recognition and compel us to revisit anew both the implications of dangerous men and the terms of engagement concerning liberation in contemporary America.

Dangerous Men: The Politics of Machismo

Markeith Loyd is not an anomaly. Rather, he is a permutation of hetero-masculinity, patriarchy, and power—the same components of which Donald Trump is made. A recent report by the Center for Disease Control reveals that more than one-third of women in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking—to be clear that is: 42.4 million women. For Black women the detailed numbers are startling: 12.2% (1,768,000) have been raped, 40.9% (5,955,000) have experienced physical violence from a partner, 14.6% (2,213,000) report being stalked, and 43.7% (6,349,000) report having encountered all three. What is more pressing is the Violence Policy Center reports “compared to a Black man, a Black women is far more likely to be killed by her spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member than by a stranger.” The same analysis of homicide data also found that most Black women were killed by males in the course of an argument with a gun and that “the disproportionate burden of fatal and nonfatal violence borne by black women has almost always been overshadowed by the toll violence has taken on black men.” Furthermore, the report also found “in 2000, black women were murdered at a rate more than three times higher than white women.” Most of these horrific and fatal encounters experienced by Black women were committed intra-racially—meaning by a male who shared the same race; this suggests both the invisibility and disposability of Black women. This may also suggest why many Black men are resistant to movements such as #SayHerName, because it forces us to to come face to face with the fact that we too are complicit in the deaths of and violence against Black women and fail to realize the damage until it is (a) too late, (b) we have daughters ourselves, or (c) death and violence impacts a woman of our family.

What typically happens in public discourse at this point is we turn to the adjudication of men to examine what type of punishment has been meted out to those who have committed these crimes. As a result, what is centered is the disparity in sentencing between white, Hispanic, and Black men and that disparity quickly becomes the means by which legal reforms are crafted and public policy is shaped. In this way primarily Black men come to represent the place of the victim (Black women) within legal systems and interventions as his alleviation and equality becomes the main objective of public reconciliation. Activists forge protests, and often demand equal sentencing. And while these protests do have merit in some way, the caveat cannot be ignored: (a) Black men should be able to do the same thing as White men and be treated in like manner; (b) solving Black men’s problems with the legal apparatus comes to represent a ‘fix’ to violence against Black women. To be clear, I am not saying that Black men should experience lengthier sentences and stiffer classifications of crime. What I am pointing to is the tendency of public outcry to focus on the delimitation of the male subject (black, white, and otherwise) and white women as sympathetic subjects whereby public acts of patriarchal chivalry secures their recognition and rights. That is to say, what becomes more immediately salient to the public is male victimization and white women’s inequality, as opposed to the harm of Black women. In other words, what is being pushed for along these lines of protest is the ability of Black men to be men as well as an active, recognized part of the citizenry—and, by way of extension, part of that “being men” the ability to commit gendered offences and receive lighter sentences and return to their lives as normal—and also for white women to be safely secured in womanhood. Hence the protest itself comes to demand the rectification of the Black male subject, as he interrupts the life and rights of Black women, and simultaneously protest come to reinforce the recognition and stabilization of white women as Black women are refused the same.

The interruption of Black women’s rights and life represents the point at which Black men as a group and Donald Trump, indeed White men as a group, intersect. This intersection of life and rights interruption lays at the feet of Black men our complicitness in the stabilization and perpetuation of “The Donald.” What we must take accountability for is the desire to be ‘men’ and perform its attending power according to how that category has been defined by whiteness. Oftentimes what this has meant is the perpetuation of harmful masculinity and the pervasiveness of patriarchy unchecked and unchallenged. Like several white women at the recent Women’s March, what Black men have come to define as the problem is not the structure, but the person of Donald himself. In other words, for many Black men it is not that the structure (or institution) itself that is harmful, but the fact that we are not recognized as men within that structure—otherwise all would be well. Similarly, for several White women, as evidenced by some at the Women’s March (despite overwhelmingly voting for Trump as a group), the problem is not the structure (or institution), but rather who is the representation of that structure and what he is doing to them: the refusal of recognition as women—the same existence Black women have been forced to live with; the resulting complaint becomes: ‘I should not have to live like this, so if we get rid of Trump then all will be well’ or ‘if Trump just acknowledges my rights, then I am fine.’

These identities converge in the political realm to construct men, albeit dangerous men, in service of US nationalism and white supremacy. And although other identities are involved in this process, I focus on race and gender in the white/black binary because these work to form the ceiling and foundation of normative relations and social designations in the US. At the place of convergence of these identities and their related interests, we observe a choreography of politics that does not demand resistance, rather it insists upon protest; and this is most often done via the performance of a hetero-masculine politics that is not about the issue at hand itself, rather the recognition, implementation, and competition of access to socio-political power and positioning.

A salient example of this masculine performative power in politics plays out between Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and male mayors across the US—such as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. In recent days the US has become a whirlwind of confusion as Donald Trump inches steadily toward building a wall on the US-Mexico border and detaining international citizens and American citizens at airports around the world and in the US. Trump’s executive power trip has been matched by the persistence of many city mayors who refuse to comply, and as a result, declare their cities sanctuary cities and their airports a welcome place for everyone. The mayor of Boston, Marty Walsh, went so far as to offer the place of power in Boston, City Hall, as a safe place for those seeking relief from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Interestingly, Mayor Walsh has yet to offer City Hall as a safe place for the Black Lives who are hunted by police in his city. This struggle between the presidential apparatus and local politicians not only unveils the politics of recognition concerning contemporary issues, but the struggle also reveals the performance of power between the two political locales. The non-recognition of Black Lives in Boston, Los Angeles, and many other cities, yet the recognition of the weight of presidential orders on municipal control concerning undocumented persons reveals to us that the latest battle we are witnessing is not about protecting families and undocumented persons, rather it is about men’s rights to retain their power about what to do with these persons. In other words, this is about who has control over the legislative and executive, as well as who has authority to control the bodies of others and have that power recognized—just like Markeith Loyd. This is not about the rights of undocumented persons or women, but about men’s right to flex and perform power unrestrained.

In all of this the nation has reached a boiling point with many insisting that Trump is a problem regarding undocumented lives and women’s rights. However, what is primarily ignored is the fact that Trump is not performing this type of power just for the sake of performing it, rather he is in competition with Barack Obama who earned the moniker “Deporter in chief” as he forcefully removed more persons from the US than any other president. Former President Barack Obama hid this scheme in the phrase “felons not families” while missing the fact that felons are a part of families (who come to be impacted by way of association laws). The families impacted under Obama were primarily Black and Latino/Hispanic. The reproductive and productive work of women belonging to these racial and ethnic groups received little to no recognition from the mainstream and received no national women’s march or outrage—the harm from Obama imposed on these women’s reproductive rights/labor was not seen as a violation. The hopes they have for their children and the dreams they have for their families were not acknowledged—this was despite legislative efforts such as DACA, which itself came to represent a political masculine form of power whereby Obama decided from among the undocumented who could and could not stay. The careful wording of acts such as DACA allowed a hard line to be drawn in the political landscape of the United States and ultimately came to define who is disposable in the US. The Lives of Undocumented persons merged with national resistance movements like Black Lives Matter to focus not on the person (Obama), but on the harm of the structure (or institution). As this took place, Trump’s birther protest against Obama the person catapulted him to the presidency, and ultimately granted Trump a means by which he could show and perform that he is more ‘man’ than Obama by getting more tough on immigration and the control of women’s bodies and their re/productive labor—hence white women begin to cry out, because the recognition they received from Obama is in jeopardy because Trump is primarily about proving his male bravado is stronger than that of Obama’s (hence the first White House press conference under Trump’s administration being about crowd size, support, and admiration for him). And this is how the US has come to find itself where it is: we have constructed dangerous men and forged a white exclusionary feminine opposite that supports and exchanges weight with a masculinity that will stop at nothing to demonstrate, perform, and symbolize a power that strangles us all whether it’s in the form or Markieth Loyd, Barack Obama, Eric Garcetti, Donald Trump, Amy Schumer, or Hillary Clinton.

The demands of Black men to be recognized as men, paired with the demand of droves of white women to keep their recognition and rights as such (when women of color have been refused recognition as women in the first instance and have went primarily ignored by white women), and white men’s representation of power comes to have significant implications in what is defined as protest and resistance.

The Terms of Engagement.

The reality of the fact is most of those in the streets at this moment are not engaged in resistance. Rather, what most are engaged in is protest politics. Protests emerge from the left, right, or center aisle and come into sharp relief not when the integrity of the structure (or institution) is in trouble, but rather when the leadership or direction of the structure is opposite that of the desire of those who have a stake in the trajectory of it. In other words, protests serve to bring about a new normal or reinstate a previous condition of existence, it is a tactic of negotiation and a means of forcing inclusion in an existing harmful structure. What I am offering here is that there is nothing revolutionary or radical about protest and that there is a critical difference between protest and resistance.

A UCLA Political Science professor, Melvin Rogers to be exact, once told me “Antwann you are interested in substructures.” Since that time I have found Professor Rogers’ assessment of my interests to be accurate. When we talk about partisan politics or third party options what is often left out of the conversation is the end goal objective of these particular political segments to maintain the US. That is, these parties differ in their political approach but what is most important to each is that the United States maintains its empowered position on the world stage. This is how President Obama was able to pledge removing troops from occupied countries, yet send drones in their place. This is how Trump can pledge more jobs, while betting international financial turmoil via tariffs (yet somehow the US would be stabilized). This is how third party political organizations can demand (and pay for) a recount of votes, yet fail to realize the implications of that recount.

The political maneuvers of these ideological positions (along with those of lobbyists, bankrolling parties, and the like) come to play out against a certain backdrop. This backdrop is highly intersectional and nuanced, and makes up what I am terming as the underside of the right, left, and center US political aisles. The underside of the aisle is composed of a politics that is both acknowledged and unacknowledged at the same time so that surface politics and its attending protests (GOP, Democrat, Third party, etc) may come into public view. By suggesting the existence of an under-aisle, I am not suggesting that those who make up this particular political locale do not from time to time disrupt the ebb and flow of mainstream politics (prisoner’s strikes are a worthy example)—however, what I am saying is that in order for mainstream politics and protests to keep its visibility and power the under-aisle must be marshaled according to the needs of dominant political actors (and parties).

The political paradoxes and choreographies of mainstream politics (and its attending political theater) have made themselves most visible in the recent inauguration of Donald Trump. Most Conservatives’ agenda is righting America from the seemingly wayward path of former democratic US President, Barack Obama. Most Liberals’ agenda is getting rid of Trump or thwarting him in some kind of way. Most third party folk’s agenda is re-shaping US government in a particular way that aligns to their party’s beliefs. In all of these views what remains the same is both the structure of the United States and its position as a world power and a domestic oppressor, and along with these things the political invisibility of those who occupy the under-aisle. And it is these lives, those in the under-aisle, who make the mainstream political wrestle (this wrestle includes the moderate center and marginal third parties) for power possible, yet simultaneously define what resistance is.

The under-aisle is a unique place. It is the place where the anti-Black is forged so that racism may play out on the larger political stage which the dominant occupy (in this instance I am drawing a concrete difference between racism and anti-blackness that emerges in the political. A worthy example is immigration and its attending issues. While immigration is largely seen as a Latino and/or Hispanic issue, those most impacted by immigration in the US are Black people. The invisibility of this fact is grounded in both the identity and the socio-political position of those who occupy the under-aisle. Therefore, Latino and/or Hispanic peoples are able to make a claim on the State via the harm of racism—hence the June 2012 DACA legislation; however Black people remain unable to do so (make a successful claim on the State) because of the anti-black position of the State, which in turn makes the claim of Latino/Hispanic persons both possible and politically visible, despite the fact the some Latino/Hispanic people are in fact Black—which brings up many other questions that I will not address here). The under-aisle comes also represents the backdrop against which all things normative are defined (e.g. women).

Upon the election of Donald Trump as President many Americans cried foul. What was called for was resistance. However, this ‘resistance’ was not of the State but of the man himself. In other words, the elimination of Trump would allow the US to proceed as normal and this is what is desired (in the minds of those who embraced this viewpoint). This particular call for ‘resistance’ contrasts sharply with resistance strategies that preceded the election of Trump—Black Lives Matter and #SayHerName are worthy examples of this. These particular organizations espoused a type of politics that is birth from the under-aisle and thereby embraced a type of resistance which demands a disruption of the State, not a person; abolition, not reform. Moreover, the resistance strategies employed by these individuals are largely seen and described as anti-American, unpatriotic, outside agitators, and counter-productive to the US project and oftentimes lands its proponents somewhere in the cross-hairs of the US government (e.g. Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Fred Hampton, etc.). It is also worth noting that resistance oftentimes occurs beyond the purview of the public gaze. In other words, what we come to learn of protests is that they are seen as part of sustaining the US project and are at worst tolerated by US institutions and at best are supported by the same.

The “resistance” of anti-Trump activists and the resistance of organizations such as Black Lives Matter force us to re-evaluate the literal terms of political engagement and the ‘what for’ of dissent. What we know of the resistance strategies of Black Lives Matter (BLM), Black Power activists and supporters, insurgencies of the Enslaved, and many others (such as Native Americans and indigenous Samoans) is that resistance necessarily means (among many things) the challenging and undoing of State structures and mainstream political ideologies (this includes challenging reform, reform is not radical but a liberal pacifier and tool of negotiation). These particular schools of thought (BLM, etc.), which are located in the under-aisle, are not necessarily concerned with the stability and viability of the US, but instead are concerned with breaking those who comprise the under-aisle free from the quotidian violence they encounter from the State. Therefore, resistance is forged by means of the invisible lives who push back against a structure (e.g. the State) and not necessarily the corporeal representation of the State. What these organizations understand is that challenging a corporeal representation does not alleviate the State of its violent existential reality. Therefore, exclusively anti-Trump activists who did not take to the street before his election (and interestingly some who are in the streets now actually voted for him) represents a type of liberal reform that does not speak to the persistent and pervasive threat and violence of the State toward Black and Indigenous lives; this is not resistance, but is in fact protest.

What Black Lives Matter and Others who make up the under-aisle reveal to us is those who are liberal anti-Trump activists are not embracing a type of resistance strategy, but rather are engaged in protest politics—which comes with a type of recognition from and collaboration with the State and allows these individuals an even position with the State when in negotiation. Those who engage in protest politics ultimately come to merge with those who identify themselves as anarchists—as they have the privilege to refuse the corporeal representation of the State; and this is the anarchists’ chief problem: the representation of authority, not the source of authority itself. Therefore the protester and the anarchist come to have a number of things in common: (1) their chief problem is the bodily representation of national power; (2) they generally agree with the socio-political/economic position of themselves; (3) they are not considered a threat to the State; (4) they are not othered in their performance of their politics and thereby avoid terms such as domestic terrorists and thugs (and are thereby allowed to ravage a city without penalty and are never condemned for “destroying their own neighborhood”).

What I am saying is protest and anarchy are privileges of the mainstream recognized citizen, while resistance is an act of survival from those who comprise the under-aisle. Those of the under aisle have a different mission than those of the upper mainstream—one is concerned with the corporeal representation of the State and avoiding living life in likeness to those of the under-aisle, while the other is concerned with the State itself and its attending violence. What helps to bring this point into sharp relief is an MSNBC reporter who interviewed a White woman and her daughters at the recent Women’s March in Washington, D.C. After the reporter concluded her interview, her take away was these protesters are not necessarily against Trump, but want their rights acknowledged by the new president. Houston we have a problem. The woman who was interviewed did not wish to challenge the US structure itself, but desired to remain included and acknowledged by it and was willing to accept President Trump if he would do this (and presumably if he is not willing, then he should be dismissed and another appointed who will grant her access to the US structure—but I hope she doesn’t think this is in the person of Mike Pence).

What is most compelling is that recent protests have largely drowned out the resistance taking place in the under-aisle, because protester’s immediate concern is stabilizing the State, not the lives which #SayHerName and #BlackLivesMatter contend for. At the Los Angeles Women’s March when Black Lives Matter organizer Dr. Melina Abdullah took the stage to address how these issues intersect, the crowd was noticeably less attentive and respondent because what Dr. Abdullah was addressing was not their issue—even in plain sight and when spoken to directly those of the upper aisle ignore and suppress the voices of those located in the under-aisle because what is performed there is resistance which interrupts the lives and privileges of those who protest (Cuba is a worthy example).

As we move further into the days of Trump it is important to mark the difference between protest and resistance, because in this hour protest will not save you. Removing Trump from office will not stop Black women from being murdered at a higher rate, Black undocumented folks from being deported at a higher rate, Black homelessness existing at a higher rate, and Black Lives being imprisoned and killed by the State at a higher rate. Protest is possible because anti-blackness is. What will save us in this hour is resistance, critical resistance—we must insist on the challenging of the institution and its related structures itself. We must think of new ways to constitute society that does not result in the relegation of any particular group; we must imagine a new world and end this nightmare of Hobbs, Locke, Bentham, Rousseau, and others. Democracy, as it has been practiced, is a fictive existence constituted by hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Liberation is not merely white power in Black hands, or patriarchal power in the hands of women. The call of resistance is that we reconstitute the world by equitable means and the elimination of forced death, capitalism, borders, and bodily delimitation. Until we do this, we are complicit in the oppression we seek relief from and we are merely protesting for inclusion and recognition.