BLM and the Panopticon

This point is perhaps an obvious one, but it’s striking how Black Like Me shows that society exerts its control over blacks (well, over Griffin, at any rate) by causing them to regulate their own behavior. The clearest example in the book is the scene where Griffin is writing his letter to his wife. As he begins to write, he imagines that an “observing self saw the Negro [i.e. Griffin], surrounded by the sounds and smells of the ghetto, write ‘Darling’ to a white woman” (Griffin, p. 68). Needless to say, Griffin on one level knows that no one else would ever know about his letter writing process, but in his mind he is being watched, and he fears that his action might be perceived, disapprovingly, by others. As a result, he is forced to regulate his own action.

Compare this to Foucault’s description of the function of the Panopticon: “to induce in the inmate a state of consciousness and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power…. [T]he perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary” (Foucault, p. 201). Of course, the whites who comprise the “ruling class” do exercise power directly, so in a sense their’s is not Foucault’s “perfection of power.” But insofar as they exert power without actually exercising it, it is because they (consciously or unconsciously) constructed a Panopticon in which blacks constantly reside.