Racial violence is historically linked to the preservation of white womanhood. After the CW, white mobs throughout the South targeted black individuals, particularly men, often under the pretense that they had "raped" a white woman. Perceptions surrounding black sexuality claimed that not only were black men hypersexual, but they had a fixation on white women -- the ultimate "symbol" that established white Southern masculinity and dominance. The narrative of the "black male predator" not only worked to dehumanize black men and justify the lynchings, burnings, and castrations of black men, but also to reinforce the social hierarchy of the changing South.
Rural white farmers, free laborers of color, and newly liberated black slaves flocked to city centers seeking employment opportunities. The diversified labor pool presented both an economic and social challenge to white workers. Due to the exploitative nature of many of these industrialized jobs and limited opportunities – not to mention the threat of imprisonment that came with unemployment – many emancipated blacks were willing to work for lower wages and longer hours. In this new environment, one’s social status was less known and less fixed and traditional forms of authority—the patriarchal household, the church, the planter elite—were called into question.
Not only that, but, for the first time, black men had a modicum of power at the ballot box (at least on paper) and could join the workforce as skilled employees. This new order meant the possibility of whites and blacks coexisting and competing on equal footing – a reality that disrupted and dislocated long-held racial systems.
Prior or during lynchings, many black men were further brutalized with castration and dismemberment. This emasculating practice has its roots in slavery when the white patriarchy propagated images of black men as abnormally virile and lusty to the point of violence. However, this condemnation of black men was often accompanied by a peculiar, almost obsessive, fascination with black male bodies – especially their sex organs. Scholar Winthrop Jordan muses that the “conflicting messages embraced by Anglo-American culture as it sought to control and circumscribe the bodies of enslaves men and women, on the one hand voice repulsion for Africans, framing them as beastly, ugly, and unappealing, while on the other hand viewing them as hypersexual.”
While white men of all classes actively – and often violently – engaged sexually with black women, the thought that white women could operate with the same level of agency was wholly radical. For the white patriarchy to uphold power and superiority over enslaved black bodies, black male sexuality could not be allowed to flourish, or even exist. So instead of tackling the reality of black male desirability, they instead painted enslaved men as bogeymen who were incapable of controlling their sexual urges and natural desire for white women (put a pin in that). White women were framed as helpless and wholly dependent on their white male protectors who defended and avenged them in equal measure against the “savage black man.”
While, on some levels, this imagery was also meant to deter white women from joining the workforce and becoming socially (and financially) independent from their patriarchal families, many white women played a role in the ritualized violence of black bodies.
Weaponizing their femininity + backwards perceptions of racial superiority, they pointed out "suspects" who were then brutalized publicly (and privately) as a way of "avenging their honor and affirming their racial dominance over black bodies." They attended public executions and burnings alongside their husbands, brothers, and fathers, often brought their children along. At home, they framed the destruction of black communities and black life as the only way of preserving their economic and political dominance over blacks (and to a lesser extent immigrant communities). Integration and reconciliation were not solutions, but forms of oppression against the white race.
While we've steered away from lynchings as a society, the remnants of white supremacy and racial violence exist in police brutality and weaponized FALSE accusations like #AmyCooper.
Commentators and talking heads will argue whether or not she was justified in her actions. Even if she was intimidated (I'm 5'2 and can probably be tossed like a football) but the tactics she resorts to (raising her voice, her change in body language, even the look on her face) the same ones used by racists women of the late nineteenth and mid twentieth century. She, like so many women before her, thought that her whiteness (and womanhood) entitled her to point her pale finger and lie without a thought about the implications or consequences. We will likely never know if she truly meant to cause harm or simply make him “leave her alone.” But her actions reveal that she saw no problem lying - a lie that could potentially lead to the death of black man. If that happened, how could she ever reconcile her privilege and racism?
This is why antiracist education in schools and work places is essential work. Racism isn't about someone being triggered by shitty jokes or tweets about how the Confederate soldiers were patriots (they were not). Racism shapes our interactions and access and, sometimes, whether or not we'll make it home. To support the actions of people like #AmyCooper is not only dangerous but sets a precedent that validates the restoration of white supremacist policies all for the sake of white economic, political, and social control and dominance over black, brown, and indigenous bodies.
The only way to reconcile this reality for white Americans to unlearn their ideas that “we’re all equal” or “race doesn’t matter.” We are all human and deserving of respect, empathy, and equity . . . but do not mistake that for us being equal. We are not and race does matter. It matters so much that our very lives depend on it. Once you recognize this reality, you must educate yourself, teach your children, and activate your activism.
