No name in the street: Unknowability, Black women, and missing geographies

Abstract

Renisha McBride, who was killed by a white homeowner while seeking help after a car crash, made national headlines due to her murderer’s stand your ground defense failing to absolve him of manslaughter charges. This article argues that a key factor in McBride’s justice claims were the unknown characteristics of her encounter with the murderer that allowed family members to advocate on her behalf. Using the Black Feminist concept of unknowability, I look at how news media discourses about McBride’s unknown space and time prior to her encounter made her invisible while facilitating the continuous questioning of the events that night. Through an analysis of McBride’s negative portrayals in news media and court proceedings along with family members’ testimonies, I consider the ways unknowability affords Black women the ability to move from geographies of invisibility to visibility through a constant questioning of Black women’s relationship to space. I argue that unknowability allowed McBride to obtain some form of juridical justice.