by Youverlande Ozerus
Definition:
Bodily hexis is the unconscious way that people in a given society learn to use their bodies to express their social identity.
Descriptions:
Bodily hexis shows the social learning that an individual has gained through the repeated motion of using their body to unconsciously interact or act in the world around them. These bodily actions are learned during childhood, such as culturally appropriate ways of using their bodies when they talk, stand, sit, and walk. Moreover, bodily hexis allows a person to identify with a social group by enabling them to learn the social and cultural practices of that specific group, for example, body language like postures, speech, and body movement. Bodily hexis also shows one’s social place by allowing them to see a combination of their social status through the way they use their body in social interactions and the way it is interpreted by people in a specific setting. This concept can be connected to the idea of performance due to the way it enables an individual to perform society’s rules and values, through the bodily routines they act upon in the social world without having to think about it.
Application:
In recent years, one issue that has become problematic for the black community is police brutality. In a study published by Frank Edwards (et al), 1 out of 1,000 black boys and men will be killed by the police in their lifetime which is 2.5 times more than white boys and men. Bodily hexis is a linguistic concept that can help us understand this phenomenon because it can be used to identify and label someone through their physical performance.
Negative cultural stereotypes about black people have been ingrained in many people in society through structural racism and the media. In the media, black people are often portrayed in a negative light, for example in various movies and TV shows the common theme around a black person is being identified with poverty, violence, dysfunctional, and criminals. Furthermore, in the media, a black person wearing a hoodie, cornrows, and tattoos is often associated with the idea of being part of a gang. These cultural stereotypes are an example of how bodily hexis is used to characterize someone that’s black.
Associating these cultural practices with a violence concept results in the audience connecting this idea to a real black person when they are performing a part of their culture in real life, such as covering their head with a hoodie, certain ways of walking and talking. As a result of these violent stereotypes, the public’s interpretations of these negative stereotypes create a fear and paranoia response when meeting black people in the physical world.
However, the issue is that police officers are an audience who have also had these default images and ideas ingrained in their mind before becoming a police officer. Therefore, a confrontation with a black person that embodies these stereotypes will elevate a fear response from the police officers. Police officers are conditioned to fire when they feel threatened, they use their body to perform a subconscious learned move or stand for their protection. This bodily hexis is embedded in their minds as a reflex due to the dangerous level of their job. Therefore, through impulse, the police officers will take the stand to fired because they are afraid of being harmed or overpowered during the confrontation since the media has created an unconscious correlation between being black with being violent.
Another negative effect of these bodily hexis movements is when a black person is in an encounter with a police officer, any body movement such as reaching creates that fear response because they assume that they are in the possession of a weapon even if they might have been reaching for ID.
A study by Yara Mekawi, the participants were shown pictures of both black and white individuals, who were armed and unarmed and had minimal seconds to decide who to shoot. The result shows that they respond more quickly to shoot when an armed black target was shown. Importantly, when the experiment was performed in States with less strict gun law, unarmed black targets were more likely to be shot.
However, this is not to excuse the act but bodily hexis help us understand some factors associated with this issue.
Bodily hexis can also show unconscious racism in performance, as some police officers take advantage of such fear response and these stereotypes to satisfy their racist urges by killing innocent black people. This can be shown when these types of killing happen, they use body hexis as an excuse to justify their actions. One example is that after the death of many black people by the police, in most cases the police officers usually reiterate by justifying their actions by stating that they believe the victim was reaching for a gun, or is in the possession of a firearm. Again, a stereotype should not be used to justify the killing of innocent black people. When news of these type of killing occurs, they often used picture that portrays the victims as violent, dangerous. For example, #IfTheyGunnedMe hashtag went viral after black twitter users notice that after the killing of a black teenager Micheal Brown, the picture the media use show him as a thug due to his stand and the fact that he’s holding a “gang signs”.
Furthermore, black people are becoming more aware of how police officers are using bodily hexis as a way to justify their killing. In response, black people are becoming more aware of this notion, therefore, they’re using it as a form of resistance.
Nowadays, in the black community, black children are being socialized in ways to use their bodies to prevent police officers from using their cultural stereotypes to justify their killings. Now, recently some news articles such as Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival, are educating black people on how to use bodily hexis to keep themselves safe during an interaction with the police. Bodily actions such as “Keep your hands in plain sight and make sure the police can see your hands at all times”, “Avoid physical contact with the police. No sudden movements, and keep hands out of your pockets”, ”Do not run”. Movies such as The Hate U Give included a scene where a black father is teaching his young children how to behave when in contact with a police officer.
Overall, bodily hexis can help us see police brutality differently and think about how learning new forms of bodily hexis can be used as a form of resistance and survival.