"bring out your dead": Understanding the historical persistence of the criminalization of black bodies

Bryant Keith Alexander; Marquis Bey

doi:10.1177/1532708616634773

"bring out your dead": Understanding the historical persistence of the criminalization of black bodies

Bryant Keith Alexander, Marquis Bey^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

African American Studies

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

Abstract

This essay speaks to the criminalization of Black bodies via the purported "confession" of wrongdoing that Blackness makes through the interpretive White gaze. Blackness operates as a site of always imminently actualized criminality or pathology that must be quelled or eradicated. Using James Baldwin's meditation on the function of Wayne Williams's body as a historical anchor, this essay seks to articulate the contemporary ways in which Black bodies are positioned via the White gaze, as well as demonstrate the continuity of anti-Black violence, itself predicated on what Charles Mills calls an "epistemology of ignorance."

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	271-277
Number of pages	7
Journal	Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies
Volume	16
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616634773
State	Published - Jun 2016

Keywords

Black bodies
Epistemology of ignorance
James Baldwin

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Cultural Studies
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

Access to Document

10.1177/1532708616634773

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AB - This essay speaks to the criminalization of Black bodies via the purported "confession" of wrongdoing that Blackness makes through the interpretive White gaze. Blackness operates as a site of always imminently actualized criminality or pathology that must be quelled or eradicated. Using James Baldwin's meditation on the function of Wayne Williams's body as a historical anchor, this essay seks to articulate the contemporary ways in which Black bodies are positioned via the White gaze, as well as demonstrate the continuity of anti-Black violence, itself predicated on what Charles Mills calls an "epistemology of ignorance."

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