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Home , White privilege

DOING THE LYNCH TANGO: WHITE WOMEN, BLACK MEN, AND RACIAL PRIVILEGE

Robin Parker, J.D., Beyond Resource Center

Contentious and distrustful interactions among black men and white women are not inevitably the product of the independent actions and intentions of the persons involved. Cultural narratives, which have long ascribed savage and bestial characteristics to black men, and passive and chaste characteristics to white women, shape modern-day interactions among the two groups and influence attitudes held in the wider society. Examination of cultural narra- tives offers an opportunity to better understand the sociological mechanisms that support and racial privi- lege, and to recast relationships that often have been rendered toxic by a potent but usually invisible ideology.

A String of Firecrackers and worried about the ways anti-racism Some ideas are better expressed through training could go wrong. I knew that talking poetry. Writing an article about white women, about race could be a profound and black men, and the interplay of racial privilege transformational topic, but I had also been a among them is a topic so burdened with taboos, participant in many training sessions that went , and historical tragedies that it is awry because they were badly taught. The difficult to find a good place to start. More problem was particularly acute for me because than other racial topics, this one requires a the courses we offered on race addressed the careñil understanding of the shared history that "tough" issues, such as racial privilege and white women and black men have had in the internalized , and did not shy away , and a thoughtful understanding from talking about how participants were of the ideology that has shaped that history . different because of their uncommon racial Otherwise, any exploration of the ways the experiences, not just talking about how two groups have affected each other participants all held so much in common. disintegrates into the very misconceptions that One fall weekend, I was teaching our scholarly writing seeks to allay . I am not a "Basic Anti-Racism" course with a colleague. poet, but I have found that telling a story The training was a lively one, and was going sometimes creates a good place to begin a well: the participants were engaging, and the discussion when other devices fail. So, I will group was willing to share their experiences start with one of my own. with one another. Among the approximately I am a black man. About 15 years ago I 20 participants was Mary (not her real name), worked as a deputy attorney general and a white woman in her forties, who was an director of New Jersey^ Office of Crime accomplished educator. During one of the and Community Relations. One of my discussions, Mary began to interrupt another responsibilities included offering anti-racism participant, a common occurrence when ("diversity") training to individuals and people get excited about a topic. Mary was organizations throughout the state; indeed, I seated directly across from me (everyone was not only ensured that the training was available, seated in a large circle), about 15 feet away, I also taught many of the training sessions with so I said, "Hold on a second, let' s let Anne colleagues from my office and with trusted finish," and simultaneously held up my hand in volunteers. Anti-racism training was a new a "stop" gesture. Mary did not stop, but went venture for me—^I'm a lawyer by profession— on to finish her thought in another few so during the first years of this undertaking, I sentences. The group's discussion then was especially nervous about my teaching skills continued unremarkably.

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A few minutes latei; we took a scheduled lunch break could provoke ire and a complaint aftemoon break for fifteen minutes. During that I was either unfair about time allocation those breaks, participants usually relax, use or insensitive about the issues at hand. The the restrooms, and get refreshments. I went incidents were infrequent, but persistent outside the building to get some fresh air and enough to make me despair because no matter I after a few minutes walked back toward our how I tried to parse them, I could not I training room. As I emerged from an elevator understand why they continued. I knew that ' and walked into the hallway, I saw that some there were stereotypes about white women, of the participants were crowded around one stereotypes about black men, and stereotypes of the hallway benches and were apparently about white women and black men together. i consoling someone who was crying. As I Yet none of those seemed to fit my neared the group, I could see that it was Mary experiences. Besides, white women were who was in disfress. I asked her what was among the greatest supporters and attendants I wrong. She looked at me without answering at the anti-racism trainings. Unlike white men j and just shook her head. "Can anyone tell me (who usually did not attend), white women I what's going on?" I asked the group. No one were more often courageous about racial I would answer, but just looked at me with a issues and willing to take themselves and others ¡ sense of apprehension. to task. Indeed, they had been some of my best teachers about anti-racism efforts. Still, I told Mary I was concemed and wanted the string of firecrackers that was my freakish to help, and I asked her again to tell me what dealings with a small number of white women was happening. "I just don't know whether I continued to explode. can go on," she said. "When you put your hand , up and said 'stop,' it made me feel—like really I received some clarity in a training that threatened and unsafe." She then melted into happened late in 2008.1 had since stopped ; the bench and continued to cry for about 10 working for the State of New Jersey and had \ minutes until my fellow trainer was able to helped establish the Beyond Diversity ' convince her that it was worthwhile to Resource Center to continue anti-racism continue. She stayed for the remainder of the training and other human relations efforts. The training that day and the next, but appeared training director, Pamela Smith Chambers, and visibly wounded and quite wary of me. I were conducting a training session for ; I avoided making a further issue of the members of a nonprofit organization that ' incident during the training, but I was shocked wanted to ensure that its staff members kept \ by what had happened. I spent months trying their diversity skills sharp. One of the exercises to figure out what I had done wrong, and how we conducted is a now classic one in which ! I could have handled the situation better . I we asked participants to form a line standing spoke with other trainers whom I tmsted to shoulder-to-shoulder. I read a list of racial get some dispassionate assessments of the privileges and anti-privileges to the participants situation; I questioned how my own male and asked them to move forward or backwards privilege might have been at work; and I tried depending upon how each privilege or anti- to allow the incident to be an opportunity for privilege applied to them. Example: "If you my own leaming. Ultimately , I would have have ever been followed by a security guard constmed the incident as a singular anomaly in a store because of your race, take one step if I had not later experienced what became an back.... If you have never been followed by a ever-increasing list of similar experiences with security guard in a store because of your race, white women. take one step forward." This is a powerñil I As the years passed, wondering when and exercise and one that can bring up strong why a white woman would "have a meltdovm" emotions because of the visual impact it over something I said or did became a kind of inspires: members of the culturally privileged ; training expectation and a source of personal group—^—arrive at the front of I worry. Even something as seemingly innocuous the room because they have mostly taken steps as my dismissing a group of participants for a forward, and members of the culturally

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unprivileged group—^people of color—arrive negative experiences I had with some white at the rear of the room because they have women during training sessions. I undertook mostly taken steps backward. this quest mindñil that my negative experiences After the participants moved themselves were repetitive but infrequent, and therefore I through the exercise, Pamela and I asked would be searching for the cause or causes of everyone to share their thoughts and feelings. a particular dynamic—^but certainly not the There was nothing unusual in this debrief only dynamic—^that happens between white compared to the many others we had done in women and black men. the past: emotions were high, and some individuals felt a startling sense of new leaming. History Written in Lightning/Leopard's After about 30 minutes we were about to Spots conclude the discussion, when one participant. What was happening in my interactions Sue (not her real name), a white woman in felt like it came from somewhere else, not her thirties, signaled that she would like to simply from the sometimes contentious make a comment. I called her name and asked relationship individuals have with their hosting her to go ahead. diversity trainers. I wondered whether racial "I feel like I've been violated," she said privilege was at work in sparking those as she looked at me with a grimace. "And you experiences. The question was a tricky one don't have any right to make me feel like this." because the white women and I represented She broke her gaze from me and then glanced groups that both hold and do not hold cultural around the room. "It (the exercise) makes me privileges as part of primary identification; that think of how dangerous things might getYou is, I hold , but not white privilege; know now that Obama has been elected, and they hold white privilege, but not male privilege. there have been some blacks I've heard on Reasoning how these nested sets of privileges the news that will want to get white people might have played out among us could yield for what happened before. I don't want to think two primary outcomes: Male privilege would about that. I just feel really violated and make me act bossy, demanding, and entitled. abused." White privilege would cause the women to I kept my facilitator game face on after avoid addressing issues of race and racism by Sue's comment and closed the exercise by claiming an illusory injustice at my hands. I thanking her for sharing her thoughts. Her would be harmed by the racism inherent in comments, however, made me want to both the actions of the white women; they would laugh out loud and to recoil in horror . The be harmed by the inherent in my actions. Which part of the privilege dyad was amusing part was my conjuring a scene of actually at work—or more at work—in the angry , having now brought to situations would, of course, be subject to fruition their sinister plot to elect Senator debate. However that debate might be settled Obama as president, attacking white people (if it could be settled) seemed to leave a at random. I wondered, "Would my 79-year- shallow, unsatisfactory outcome that did not old mother start making Molotov cocktails in explain how I found myself situated among a her kitchen?" She really preferred to order few white women who in my mind were out or go to a restaurant, so the likelihood seems unfairly crying "foul." small. The horrible part was that Sue's use of the words "violated" and "abused" made me As I thought about my "white women think of the words victims of domestic violence interactions," I was reminded of the feelings and sexual assault use to describe their that came to mind when I watched a scene experiences. Although I had engaged in no from Birth of a Nation, a pre-modem film violence, Sue's words used that language to about the South after the Civil War (Griffith, describe how she felt I had treated her . I 1915). To show the social dismptions ofthat decided to try to research the larger societal era, the film has a scene in which Flora, a connections involved in her statements in the white woman from the South, goes to get hope that it would also illuminate the other water from a spring. When Flora pauses, she

128 REFLECTIONS - WINTER 2010 Doing the Lynch Tango: White Women, Black Men, and Racial Privilege is spied by Gus, an emancipated slave (who is had saved his daughter from "them brutes" played by a white actor in blackface). Gus (Dixon, 1908, pp. 123-127). watches Flora with a sinister look and then The modern reader should know that comes fi-om his hiding place in the brush to writers like Dixon did not consider the story announce that he is a captain in the military recounted above, although fictional, an and wants to marry her . He takes her hand exaggeration of the truth. The Historical Note but she slaps him and runs away through the to Leopard's Spots makes the point directly: forest with Gus in pursuit Although Gus says that he will not hurt hej-Flora climbs to a clif "/ wish to say that all the and threatens to jump if Gus does not stay incidents used... were selectedfrom away. When Gus continues his approach. Flora authentic records, or came within falls from the cliff and dies. It is unclear my personal knowledge... The only whether Flora slips or throws herself from her perch, but the film suggests that such serious liberty I have taken with distinctions are unnecessary The intertitle over history is to tone down the facts to Flora advises: "For her who had leamed the make them credible in fiction. ...It stem lesson of honor , we should not grieve will be a century yet before people that she found sweeter the opal gates of outside the South can be made to death." believe a literal statement of the Flora lives long enough, however, to tell history of those times. ...I tried to her brother about her pursuer , and write this book with the utmost consequently Gus is later captured, tried by restraint"{Dixon, 1908, p. x). the Klan, lynched, and castrated. President Woodrow Wilson described the film as "history Presumably, others believed the story too, written in lightning," a history he added, that and answered the book's title-page question, was "regret(ably)...all true" (Schickel, 1984, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the pp. 268-270). leopard his spots?" (Dixon, 1908, p. vii) with a Birth of a Nation was based on the book. firm "No!" The Clansman, by Thomas Dixon (1905), who As I looked at these sources and the well captures a popular depiction of white greater historical record, I had to ask myself women and their relationship to black men if my "white woman experiences" were their after reconstruction. In another one of his progeny, and if so what part privilege had played books. Leopard's Spots, Dixon recounts the in my experiences. I also wondered how it retum of a Confederate veteran, Tom Camp, would be possible for that racial history now to witness the wedding of his daughtefArmie, about a century old, to play itself out in the to Hose Norman, "a gallant from 21st century among people so modern, the high hill country." According to the story, reflective, and aware of stereotypes. immediately after the Reverend John Durham Post-Civil War that grew out of completes the marriage ceremony , "a black the ideation of black men as raping bmtes is shadow (falls) across the doorway ," and a well known. Because of Southem worries dmnken "burly figure of a big Negro trooper" about the political enfranchisement of blacks, and six others burst into the room. After lynching was seen as a justifiable weapon to frightening the guests and causing a scuffle, preserve old racial hierarchies. A mythical the troopers carry Annie into the woods in history emerged in which what was wrong with preparation for rape. As part of the rescue the South could be exemplified in the need to plans, Tom asks his allies not to spare\nnie's defend white women against raping black men life in the effort to thwart the rape: "Shoot, (Royster, 1997). This myth had fatal men! My God, Shoot! There are things worse consequences. In 1893 alone, 52 black men than death!" Tom later thanks his ÍTiends for were lynched just for claims, allegations, killing Annie during the melee because they attempts, or suspicions of rape (\\ells, 1895).

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Most of the alleged crimes were unfounded, immersed in it, and in normal circumstances it and therefore the were acts of drops into the background by shaping violence used to consolidate racial power with experience but remaining unnoticed (Balkin, the protection of white women used as a 1998). For example, when individuals go to a deception (Wells, 1900). Moreover, whole restaurant, there are many associations, communities were purged of all black residents customs, and hierarchies that they must because of such claims (Jaspin, 2007). understand: how to address the server , what White women have racial privilege, but service should be expected, how much time that privilege seemed an ill-suited explanation should customarily elapse for the food to arrive, of what seemed to be similar experiences how loudly to speak in the restaurant, and between myself and white women, and the whether to leave a tip are all part of cultural black men and white women I leamed about modes of behavior and expectation that as I studied lynching in the United S tates. A members of the sociefy pass on to others Yet, claim of wrong (often sexual) from a white these customs are so common that they seem damsel in distress, the uncontested societal invisible. The advantage of this invisible need to redress the offense, and a lynching software is that individuals can anticipate much were the threads that seemed to be relevant about the world around them and move to my own experiences. If the analogy were through their day efficiently; it would be tme, privilege offered only glancing insight into difficult to eat at a restaurant if the mies of how the actions and pattems of thought could engagement constantly changed. The carry themselves forward. One of the disadvantage of this invisible software is that consequences of holding privilege, for example, some of these expectations perpetuate and is the tendency for the person holding privilege preserve entrenched bigotry and injustice to "define the issue at hand," including the (Balkin, 1998). determination of whether a particular action I became especially interested in Balkinà is moral, immoral, bigoted, or fair-minded, or discussion of cultural narratives as a potent the determination of whether persons under means of transmitting a sociefy' s ideology scmtiny are worthy, respected, savages, or because the themes embedded in Birth of a contemptible (Parker & Chambers, 2007). Nation andLeopard's Spots fit into a narrative Although this effect of privilege helps ejiplain stmcture. Narrative thought is the organization why the individual women I encountered might of the world into a sequence of events—a well understand the consequences of their plot—with cultural expectations. Narratives complaints about me, privilege did not explain frame our understanding of what is happening why the ideology that formed the complaints around us by using a stock story to ascribe was so powerftal and persistent. particular purposes and intentions to individuals (Balkin, 1998). What I have now termed a A Lynch Tango "lynch narrative" was similar to my own I have found a theory of ideology set forth experiences and the wider historical account. by J.M. Balkin, however , that offers the In this stock story, African American men are explanations I was seeking, and that provides sexual monsters who pursue white women. a central addition to anti-racist thinking about Those men must be subjugated to preserve privilege. Balkin (1998) describes ideology as the social ordeç and white men are the primary the "socially generated and socially sustained rescuers (D'Emilio & Freedman, 1998; ways in which human beings understand and Gunning, 1996). Embedded in the narrative are constitute their world" (p. 2), a kind of "cultural not only old stereotypes about African software" that resides in each individual, is Americans and the ability to keep them passed down and "rewritten" among terrorized and intimidated, but also deeply held individuals through their interactions, and that expectations about white women, who are enables individuals to make judgments about constmcted as being pure, pious, and modest, the social world. Cultural software is powerful and whose bodies become objectified as because it is ubiquitous; people are necessarily metaphors for the purify of the entire nation

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(Gunning, 1996; Royster, 1997). In tum, the The discussion of ideology can be lynch narrative is supported by other narratives particularly rich. I wondeç for example, to what such as the "frontier myth" and the "savage extent the lynch narrative makes itself true in war" in which whiteAmericans put themselves the interaction among black men and white in the wilderness and civilize it through women because of the narrative' s ability to expansion and the subjugation of uncivilized, subtly shape human action (Balkin 1998). Does indigenous people (Slotkin, 1998). The "rape the lynch narrative cause black men to become narrative" is another complimentary modern-day provocateurs against white companion. In it, women are shattered through women? Does it cause white women to act sexual violence and, as a consequence, lose like damsels in distress? Additionally, the their reason and voice (Cutter, 2001). question of responsibility looms large as we As these narratives operate in my own look at ideology In the lynch narrative, women interactions with white women, the narratives are coined as passive and retreating. Does the play themselves out with a more modem spin. narrative shift societal scrutiny away from the In this stock story I am the brute harassing moral responsibility that lies with those who white women about race, taking them to task, are complicit with retribution but do not carry , and putting them in distress. White women play out the retribution themselves (cf. Haslam & a wounded, mostly distraught role, and are left Reicher, 2008)? to call upon the surrounding community for Finally, I wonder whether we can have assistance and retribution. Substituting for an discussions about these and other questions overt sexual threat is the challenge and while keeping the rape narrative—a buttress potential upset that anti-racism brings to our to the lynch narrative—and actual rape distinct society. Then finally comes a plea for help that (Anderson, 2005). The rape narrative is a is assumed to be unquestionably well-grounded stock story that helps perpetuate our racial and sufficient to incite others to make me stop. ideology. Sexual assault is a violent crime that Because narratives are part of a larger happens to more than 17% of women in the ideology, it is no surprise that the lynch United States (U.S. Department of Justice, narrative would be persistent and invisibleAs 2005). Although the two share elements in Balkin (1998) states, "Because individuals are common, the importance of ideology and the constituted by their cultural software, they are harmfulness of sexual assault may be I continually immersed in forms of hermeneutic minimized if the two are confiated. power without noticing it." (p. 271). This gives By examining the components of our us the opportunity to better explain why racial racial ideology in this and other contexts, we privilege—^part of our society's ideology—is have the opportunity to better grasp their so often unnoticed. Furthermore, the ideas of consequences, evaluate their adequacy , and cultural software and its constituents, like ultimately replace old pattems of thinking with cultural narratives, give us an additional others that we believe will be more suitable. I opportunity to understand the interlocking have found relief in understanding one of the sociological mechanisms that keep racial important bases of my previously puzzling privilege and racism in place. I firmly believe interactions with white women, even if that that the work of addressing racism is difficult understanding does not promise that the lynch precisely because it is so firmly entrenched in narrative will not play itself out in the future. I our society and so absorbed by its members think that this racial ideology has held black that they fail to see it except in its most blatant men and white women in a kind of dance: a forms. Although discussion about racial lynch tango. With investigation and privilege is one way to help individuals commitment we can stop the dance, or at least understand racism, the concepts of ideology, understand why we continue to step on our cultural software, and cultural software' s partners' toes. constituent parts offer other useftil tools for leaming.

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References • Royster, J.J. (Ed.). (1997). Southern • Anderson, M.J. (2005). All-American rape. Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti- St. John's Law Review 79(3), 625-644. Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. : Bedford Books. • Balkin, J.M. (1998). Cultural software:A theory of Ideology. New Haven: Yale • Schickel, R. (1984). D. W. Griffith: And University Press. the Birth of Film. London: Pavilion Books.

• Cutter, M.J. (2000). Philomela speaks: • Slotkin, R. (1998). Gunfighter Nation: Alice Walker's revisioning of rape The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth- archetypes in the color purple. MELUS Century America. Norman: University of 25(3-4), 161-180. Oklahoma Press.

• D'Emilio, J., & Freedman, E.B. (1998). • Wells, I.B. (1895). A red record. In J.J. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality Royster (Ed.), Southern Horrors and in America (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Chicago Press. Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. (pp. 73-157). Boston: Bedford Books. • Dixon, T. (1905). The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. • Wells, LB., (1900). Mob mle in New New York: Grosset & Dunlap. Orleans. In J.J. Royster (Ed.), Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti- • Dixon, T. (1908). The Leopard's Spots: A Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, Romance of the White Man's Burden— 1892-1900. (pp. 158-208). Boston: 1865-1900. New York: Doubleday, Page. Bedford Books.

• Griffth, D.W. (Producer, Director). (1915). • U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Birth of a Nation [Motion picture]. United Justice Programs. National Institute of States: Image Entertainment. Justice. (2005). Full report of the prevalence, incidence, and consequences of • Gunning, G. (1996). Race, Rape, and : Findings from the Lynching: The Red Record of American national violence against women survey Literature. New York: Oxford University Washington, DC: Author. Press. Robin Parker is the Executive Director • Haslam, A.S., & Reicher, S.D. (2008). of the Beyond Diversity Resource Center Questioning the banality of eviLJ/ze and is a coauthor of two books. The Great Psychologist 21(1), 16-19. White Elephant and The Anti-Racist Cookbook. He previously worked as a • Jaspin, E. (2007). Buried in the Bitter deputy attomey general and chief of the Waters: The Hidden History of Racial New Jersey Office of Bias Crime and Cleansing in America. New York: Basic Community Relations. For his work in social Books. justice he has received numerous awards including the World of Difference Award • Parker, R., & Chambers, P.S. (2007). The from the ADL, and the Rachel Davis Dubois Great White Elephant: A Workbook on Award from the Intemational Institute. Racial Privilege for White Anti-Racists. Comments regarding this article can be sent Mount Laurel, NJ: Beyond Diversity to: [email protected] Resource Center.

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