US Lynchings: It’s Not Just About “Race”

 General, History  No Responses »
Dec 282012
 

The US has long had an abysmal record in extra-judicial execution by the mob – the lynching – which is a peculiarly US foible. It is noticeable in the linked Wikipedia article that the authors were desperately looking around for non-US examples of lynchings. And some of the examples are not strictly speaking lynchings at all.

Extra-judicial punishments have been common throughout history, but have almost always been due to the absence of legal authority, or the inadequacy of legal authority. In most cases, US lynchings are in fact a perverse preference for extra-judicial punishment where the legal authority certainly was available – many lynchings involved breaking into courthouse jails to extract the “guilty”.

There are plenty of resources out there on US lynchings including :-

Practically all of these sites concentrate on the racial aspects of lynchings, which is perfectly understandable given that lynchings were one of the many weapons white supremacists used to keep the negro “in his place”.

Yet there is another aspect to lynchings that tends to get overlooked. If you look at the lynching statistics provided by the Tuskegee Institute covering the years 1882-1968, of the total of 4,743 lynchings a total of 1,297 were of “white” people. A total of 27% of all lynchings were of “white” people. Of course that simple classification into black and white may be concealing other race hate crimes – apparently asian and mexican-american people have been classified as white on occasions.

But reading the stories of lynchings shows that the victims of lynchings were from all parts of society – men, women, black, and white. But predominantly black, although the last lynching of a white person occurred as late as 1964 when 2 white people and 1 black person were lynched.

This page tries to explain the white lynchings as either under-reporting of lynchings of black people in the 19th century, or the use of lynchings to punish white people who opposed the repression of black people (such as Elijah Lovejoy). Both of which are true enough.

But it’s missing a point – lynching is a tool used by the racists to repress the black people in the US, but it already existed as a tool (and was used) before the racists felt the need to repress and control the newly freed former slaves. Lynching is a way of obtaining “justice” when a community feels that justice is unlikely to be obtained any other way.

What appears to have happened in the US is that some communities seem to have acquired an entitlement to extreme forms of justice and they are not placated by the perfectly reasonable level of justice provided by the state. After all, in many of the examples of lynchings, the state justice mechanisms were “working” perfectly well – certainly a black person in the South was likely to be flung into prison for almost anything on the flimsiest of evidence. Yet the extremists were not satisfied.

What this reveals is that some in the US feel entitled to impose a level of control on their community that is not sanctioned by the democratic majority of the country as a whole. And a willingness to resort to violence to get their way. Whilst lynchings may be a thing of the past (the last recorded one was in 1981, although there is a case for arguing that this was merely a random killing rather than a lynching), the attitude may still be around … and having an effect on the level of violence in the US.

The anti-gun control fanatics are right to an extent when they claim that “guns don’t kill” but criminals do. If you compare the US gun crime statistics with other countries with similar levels of gun control (and there are some; indeed in Switzerland a significant proportion of the population is compelled to store a fully automatic assault rifle in their home), it becomes obvious that the US has a significant problem with violence. Gun control may be necessary in the short term, but long term the US needs to look at it’s violent tendencies.

John Terry’s Potentially Risible Penalty for Racism

 Politics  No Responses »
Dec 232011
 

In the news this week was the announcement that the Crown Prosecution Service will prosecute John Terry (apparently a famous footballer) for an allegedly racist verbal assault during a football game. Now I have no idea whether the alleged offence took place, whether John Terry is or is not the kind of person to make such remarks, or much idea on what football is.

What prodded me into thought was the potential fine he faces for his offence – as much as £2500. That’s quite a bit of money for me – certainly I’d think twice about doing something that might cost me that much. And there are those for whom such a such is much more significant. Yet for John Terry, such a sum is risible – according to one report, it is about the amount of money that he earns in an hour!

This is not the place to go into the ridiculously high salaries that some footballers earn for an activity whilst it brings enjoyment to some, is really just kicking a ball around. But to point out that the variation that a particular fine means to different people on different incomes, effectively means our criminal justice system punishes the poor rather more heavily than it punishes the rich.

Fines should be a proportion of our daily income – a racist remark should cost us 30-days worth of income whether that means 30-days worth of income support, of 30-days worth of John Terry’s salary. Similarly for other fines.

The Golliwog

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Feb 062009
 

Firstly I should point out this has nothing to do with Carol Thatcher’s use of the term or indeed a considerably less recent incident where Naomi Campbell was supposedly called one. It just so happened that the former has triggered the memory of a ‘story’ that I wanted to write.

Secondly this is not some kind of attempt to claim those who feel that the word (and the toy) is racists are wrong. If someone feels the use is racist that is a good enough reason to get rid of gollywogs. Besides which judging from the Wikipedia article on Gollywogs, most of the gollywog toys were pretty damn scary – too scary to be given to children anyway.

Way back in the distant past I would sometimes play with a gollywog hand puppet that my grandparents had in their house. Perhaps I was dumb (I was after all less than 10 at the time) but I always thought it was some kind of cartoon character or something. I certainly did not make an association between it and any kind of human; the toy I played with was definitely not that human!

Later at school when racist words crept in (at the some time I started getting called “four-eyes” and “lanky”), I do not recall the word “gollywog” being used to refer to anyone.

So back when I first heard about gollywogs being banned for being rascist (probably something to do with a certain jam), I practically fell off my chair in surprise. Did anyone seriously believe that there was any similarity between gollywogs and black people ?

I can distantly remember the “Golly” logo being used on certain jars of jam (“jelly” to any Americans tuning in), but again it never seemed to me to be anything other than some sort of cartoon character from the distant past. It also did not seem to bring to mind black people in any form.

Perhaps this was a case of people reading about the history of the word, and jumping to conclusions of how and why it was being used ? Taking offense at something that was not at the time intended to be used as a racist term ?

It would also explain why gollywog has apparently now become a term used by racists. I remain to be convinced that it was so used in the past … I do not remember it being used, and there are far more hateful words that were thrown around back then.

Of course having read up on it a little bit I now know that the origins were racist, but a word and an image that has originally racist origins can end up being used innocently. For example “Welsh” used to mean “foreigner” thus “Wales” meant “the land of the foreigner”, complete with a racist undercurrent. Now “Wales” is merely the name of a country we should really be calling “Cymru” (even if I’m not sure how to pronounce it).

On a side note, why do we have to use “black people” to use to refer to people whose African ancestors were rather more recent than others ? It seems rather insulting (to either “white” or “black”) to categorise any person by the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits in. And it is not even particularly accurate. “Chocolate” would work so much better and be more inclusive – my skin is white chocolate, hers is milk chocolate, and his is dark chocolate.

I’m A Rascist

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Sep 122007
 

I’m part of the human race and I’m mostly happy about that. We have a bewildering variety of members … tall ones, short ones, fat ones, thin ones, bright ones, dim ones; we even have two different sexes (which makes things even more interesting). We also have a wide variety of different shades of skin colour, and for some totally incomprehensible reason some people seem to get excited about this. The overly excitable people seem to want to divide us up into different “races” based seemingly on what colour our skin is, and use this arbitrary division to make assumptions about the person wearing the skin. As if the colour of the dead matter that keeps the squishy bits in, and the Sun (and rain) out is particularly important. Of course it is not just skin colour that matters to these people …

Apparently I’m white (although it being at the end of the summer, I’m not really sure I’m white enough to qualify). Which makes me a member of a certain “race”. I’m also English which makes me a member of a smaller “race”, and could mean I’m also Anglo-Saxon (another “race”). I live in a land called “Britain” which gives me a good chance of being a member of the “Brythonic” “race” as well. I live in the south of England so I’m also a “southerner”, and I live in Portsmouth so I’m obviously better than someone from Southampton. In addition I live on the south side of a certain road which makes me far better than those who live on the north side.

Well that’s obviously rubbish! And for the record, historically that last division (north and south of a certain road in Portsmouth) was viewed in that sort of way. If you look closely, what I’m demonstrating is that if we get hung up on differences then we can make smaller and smaller sub-divisions where the group we belong to is “better” and those outside are “worse”. And the factors that determine what sub-division we belong to (skin colour, ancestry, etc.) are the worst possible factors in determining someone’s value.

Apparently being determined not to recognise any sub-division of the human race as being valid makes me some kind of liberal wuss, which bothers me not at all … and those who criticise and call me a wuss for holding this position should sit back and think for a bit. It’s not liberal wusses that cause so much grief with their artificial sub-divisions of the human race.

I’m a rascist and fully prejudiced in favour of the human race … every single last one of them.

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