Dear Yolanda,
An intense story emerged in the campaign today. Ashley Todd, a 20-year-old, white, woman campaign volunteer for John McCain, reported that she was robbed, attacked, and mutilated by a black man at an ATM near Pittsburgh. She told police that she was violently beaten and her face was then disfigured when a black man cut a B into her cheek. Todd claimed the attack was motivated by the McCain bumper sticker on her car and that the black man carved the B into her face in order to disfigure her with Barack's initial. Here is the sadly predictable part: it did not happen. She was not robbed. She was not attacked. There was no black man. Given that the B is backwards, police believe that she disfigured herself by looking in the mirror and carving the B into her own cheek.
I don't want to make too much of this incident. Clearly Ashley Todd is a disturbed young woman. Her violent self-mutilation is tragic and sad. But Todd's actions are not just the actions of a single mentally-ill individual. Todd's story resonates as a familiar historical script about gender, race, violence, and political threat.
Here at The Kitchen Table we have discussed lynching. The terrorism of lynching was deployed against black communities in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction. By murdering black men in brutal and public ways, lynch mobs reminded African Americans of their inherent vulnerability and reinforced the reality that black people were not fully citizens because they could not count on protection of the laws in the face of this violence. False accusations of violence against white women were often the match that lit the fire of racial violence in the Jim Crow South. Lynching was a tool of political terrorism, but it was hidden beneath a mask of racial chivalry. When Ashley Todd claimed her wounds were inflicted by a black male supporter of Barack Obama she tapped into that long and frightening history. She read from a script devised more than a century ago to subjugate and oppress African Americans.
She is certainly not the first contemporary white woman to do this. Certainly we all remember that Susan Smith initially claimed her two children were car-jacked by a black man on a lonely rural road before finally confessing that she had murdered the children herself.
Todd's story resonates with this historic script, but it is critically important to point out how the end of the story radically deviates from lynching narratives. In this case the police were immediately suspicious of Todd. They did not initiate a manhunt in black communities surrounding Pittsburgh. Instead they subjected Todd to a lie detector test. When she failed they pressed her for a confession. Yolanda, this ending makes all the difference because it points to the fact that black people are not totally outside the protection of the law. It points to the reality that our citizenship status today is different than it was in 1900. It points to the reality of change across time.
Is racism still alive in America? Yes. Is racial inequality still deep, pervasive, and meaningful in the lives of black Americans. Yes. Did the police believe Ashley Todd? No. Was anyone lynched as a result of her lies? No. That matters to me.
I am utterly exhausted with having to defend my brothers, father, uncles, lovers, friends, and students against the racist assumption that black men are uniquely prone to violence. So many of the black men that I know and love are gentle, funny, smart and cool. I am disgusted with the reality that as we stand on the precipice of electing the first black president we are still haunted by the lie of the violent, black madman.
I am worried about the lengths to which white supremacy will go to maintain itself in the face of burgeoning racial equality. My progressive friends on the left like to "pooh-pooh" the potential of an Obama win to radically transform racial politics in the United States, but it seems to me that this kind of radical transformation is what the forces of American racism fear. People keep asking if black people will riot if Barack loses. Girl, white people are cutting themselves just at the thought that Barack might win! I think we are asking the wrong question about who may have the potential for post-election violence. I truly believe that we are witnessing the death throes of America's white supremacy, but I am not sure how much collateral damage may be caused when racism is thrashing about like this.
I feel tremendous pity for this young woman. She has graphically demonstrated how racism so powerfully distorts, disfigures, and harms the racist herself. Racism is America's great self-inflicted wound.
May we all be healed.
Melissa
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