On Thursday afternoon, Brandeis students, staff and faculty packed the Rapaporte Treasure Hall in the Goldfarb Library to hear a presentation by Robin Bernstein, a professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, titled "Trayvon Martin and So Many More: Racial Innocence Today."

Prof. Chad Williams (AAAS), chair of the African and Afro-American Studies department, which sponsored the event in conjunction with the American Studies program, the Education program and the Sociology department, introduced Bernstein and the topic of her lecture.

Bernstein, author of the award-winning book Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, discussed the changing conceptualization of race and childhood in America, particularly the ideas of racial innocence and racial guilt.

Trayvon Martin, who was 17 at the time of his death in 2012, was "at the moment of racial innocence and the blooming of racial guilt," said Bernstein.

She launched into her presentation with a personal anecdote, one which she said she had never told anyone until the previous night. The events she described "actually launched the line of questioning that eventually resulted in me writing Racial Innocence," she explained.

Bernstein depicted a scene in which she, an 11-year-old girl growing up in New York City in the late 1970s, witnessed a peculiar instance of harassment while riding the public bus on her way home from school. She was sitting on the bus across from a white teenage girl and two black boys when the girl started to poke the boys, and lightly hit one of them on the head with a soft, spiral-bound notebook.

"She was poking the boys, and she was laughing. The boys were laughing, too, but it was an uncomfortable laugh that was totally unlike the girl's peals of laughter," Bernstein recalled.

She went on to describe how another passenger "verbalized the question that had been in my head. He asked the girl, 'Do you know them?' To which she replied, 'No, I just think they're funny.'" It was at this moment, said Bernstein, that she realized she "was witnessing something very wrong."

"On that bus in 1979, I saw what I would call, 25 years later, 'racial innocence,'" she explained. Within the concept of racial innocence, she went on to identify key "lies and libels," namely that the category of childhood does not include black juveniles, that black juveniles do not feel pain, and that, because of this, violence against them doesn't matter.

Bernstein then went on to discuss the Martin case, analyzing the ways in which Martin's age and innocence were perceived by both the defendant, George Zimmerman and the jurors.

"When Zimmerman called 911, he told the dispatchers that Martin seemed 'about 19, his late teens.' And moments later ... he referred to Martin as 'a kid,'" Bernstein explained. However, in subsequent court appearances, Zimmerman said he thought that Martin was closer to himself in age, or slightly younger than 28.

This was connected to a new "lie and libel" that developed in recent history, said Bernstein, that black youth are a criminal threat.

Later in the discussion, she examined Florida's Stand-Your-Ground law, which was used to defend Zimmerman, from the perspective of a cultural historian.

"The law legalizes violence based on fear, that is the experience of feeling threatened. And the experience of being threatened is inseparable from the history of race and age," she said. "That's why Stand-Your-Ground laws are inherently racial, are inherently racist."

In the question-and-answer session that followed, Bernstein addressed multiple queries about the relationship of racial innocence and fear to lynching in America in the late 19th century. Audience members also asked about the way that space plays a role with race and Stand-Your-Ground laws, as well as race and laws regarding the age of consent.

Prof. Jerry Cohen (AMST), who attended the lecture, brought up some of the more specific aspects of the Martin case, and questioned Bernstein's interpretation of the self-defense law.

"Frankly, I'm not convinced you understand the Stand-Your-Ground law," said Cohen, questioning whether it would have been used to defend Martin, rather than Zimmerman, had Martin lived.

Williams eventually capped Cohen's questioning of Bernstein to open up the floor to other audience members, including a student from Florida, who spoke about the local perception of the case.

"I think ... what's so important about Professor Bernstein's work is, as a cultural historian, she's able to provide a historical context for these type of conversations," said Williams in an interview with the Justice. "Even though people may have different opinions, different interpretations, I think it's always important to go back to the historical record ... I think it's important to analyze the textual evidence to have an informed opinion about these different matters."
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