That was great and this quote reminds me of the unflinching attitude of Malcolm X. He always appeared unbowed. In general, a great piece. Yes, as I white guy I think it’s OK to offend white people. I mean, have whites seen the horror of “Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day.” The barbarity depicted and depravity committed by whites as seen in this short documentary represents just a few years of the lynchings that went on the twenty plus years before and after the time period depicted in that five Star documentary. The genocidal techniques and displaced pride whites had in this slaughter of innocent black men (and a few women) is beyond (slightly) the atrocity committed in the Jewish Holocaust.
That last comment probably will offend some Jews, who will deride the scale and fierceness of the genocide committed by Hitler’s regime to that committed in America. And there is a truth there, that the shear scale of murder in Germany’s supremacist slaughter was frighteningly methodical and the numbers of Jewish people killed, an estimated 6 million, is mind boggling. When added to Stalin’s murder of Jews and Russia’s Jewish pogroms (or mini-genocides starting the late 1880s), a number some scholars estimate as 1-3 million, then the numbers are frighteningly large, suggesting 9 million Jews killed because of supremacist beliefs.
But note that I was talking about the atrocity of American genocidal techniques of American Supremacists and mob lynchings, not the volumes. The length of time these lynching techniques occurred over (at least 7 decades) occurs on a time scale much longer than the Germans or the Russians. I’m not talking about various genocidal techniques involved in the centuries of slavery, though they could easily be added. Instead, I’m focusing on just the post-Reconstruction era up until 1965, because the atrocities are documented in details: stabbing, cutting of genitals, then burning the negro, then hanging them sometimes while still alive. Thousands of whites gathered around gleefully cheering, taking pictures, cutting of fingers to auction as souvenirs from the burnt remains of the dead body, or pieces of bones or liver. This celebratory town festival atmosphere around the murders of black Americans is I say “slightly” beyond the depravity of the Germans in “quality” while not in “quantity”, because of the Germans contained their slaughter in Germany to inside the camps away from the eyes of normal citizens. In the South and Midwest where most lynchings occurred, the towns people were present and watching in exuberant communal commitment. How to overcome that decades and decades long conditioning of racist white attitude that looks upon black American citizens with such contempt?
You’re correct, the label WA is trite and disrespectful. I believe in part it was made and propagated to turn whites against the BLM movement to “turn them” to voting red. The whites you quoted and rightly highlighted don’t see the criticism you’re pointing out, but they will now probably vote “white”, for GOP candidates. They will step off their centrist fence with an attitude of “I tried to be a White Ally but was attacked by blacks.” Never underestimate the GOP think tanks strategists duplicitous undermining techniques to inflame white racism. They are vastly well funded and deeply experienced.
So thanks for all the questions and insights. The gaslighting has to stop and the racist legal laws and decisions that went of for decades needs to be shown for what it was, anti-American, anti-Civil rights, or inalienable rights. Throwing an American flag over decades of white segregationist laws and deprivation of the right to a fair trial under the constitution for these black men who were barbarically lynched doesn’t make those decades after the Reconstruction American. Not even close.
