RACISM
Where Racist Language is Used, Violence is Quick to Follow
An essay about how racist language perpetuates violence
The language we use is powerful because it helps to shape the world we live in, how people treat one another, and what type of behavior is a socially acceptable, or shunned. Racial slurs and stereotypes are more than crude insults; they aim to dehumanize a racial minority group and normalize the violence perpetrated against them. And when society fails to confront racist myths, they harden and those who believe them become resistant to facts. David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, suggested in a 1985 editorial, “The Black Plague,” that if a Black person obtains a position at a white-owned company, he’d be “fighting a losing battle against his genes,” to maintain his position, implying that Black people are inferior. While race is a social construct and not biological, racist people like Duke often characterize Black people as inferior in an effort to justify their disparate treatment and position within American society.
Stereotypes fan the flames of racial violence
One stereotype, commonly referred to as the brute caricature depicts Black men as “savage, animalistic, destructive, and criminal deserving punishment, maybe death,” according to the Jim Crow Museum. The presumption that Black boys and men are dangerous is often weaponized. It’s how a White woman like Carolyn Bryant’s false accusation that, the 14-year old Black teenager Emmett Till whistled at her inspired his lynching. David Duke suggested that “White people don’t need a law against rape,” but that such legislation is needed “because niggers are basically primative animals.” Portraying Black men as violent animals, rather than people, is a way of spreading fear and a blatant attempt to justify violence targeting them. And this notion, is not confined to the Ku Klux Klan. When former President Donald Trump announced his candidacy, he claimed, without evidence, that immigrants crossing the border from Mexico were “rapists,” a comment that echoes Klan members’ racist propaganda.
Likewise, when actor and director Mel Gibson left a voicemail on his ex-girlfriend’s answering machine, telling her, “ if you get raped by a pack of niggers, it will be your fault,” he played upon the same an old trope that Black men prey upon White women. The truth is America does have a rape culture problem, but White men are by no means innocent bystanders. For centuries, White men freely raped Black women without legal consequence, so accusing Black men of dishoring White women in masse is nothing more than a deflection. Statistics show that one in every six women in America “has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime,” and “93% of all sexual assaults are intra-racial,” meaning someone of the same race committed them. Yet, the myth of the Black rapist persists, despite the facts exposing the trope as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
It is this type of language, racial stereotypes, and slurs that popularized racial terror lynchings, which became commonplace throughout the South in the years following the Civil War. Black men were falsely accused of raping White women so often that the stereotype became political. America’s first woman senator and former enslaver, Rebecca Felton, once said, “As long as your politicians take the colored man into their embrace on election day…so long will lynching prevail.…If it needs lynching to protect woman’s dearest possession from the ravening human beasts.” Felton advocated for extrajudicial lynchings to continue throughout the South as a way of controlling Black people, of keeping them away from the ballot box. Still, she attempted to mask her racist intention (voter suppression) by portraying Black men as dangerous, all to gain like-minded supporters, hoping they’d look past her womanhood and find commonality in her racism. “I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary,” Felton urged, with no evidence that Black men posed a systemic threat to White women. We can see this anti-Black racial stereotype persist in the way people refer to Black men as thugs, a term that implies Black men are innately criminal .
Racist language begets more violence. In an effort to justify White Southerners’ brutal tradition of lynching Black people, they portrayed Black people as inherently dangerous, a stereotype so pervaisive it endangered the lives of thousands of Black Americans. Journalist Ida B. Wells, an anti-lynching advocate, declared, “The Afro-American is not a bestial race,” in response to the pervaisive attacks on their character. And while some argue that Black people should not spend time defending their humanity, it stands to reason that as long as racists spread myths to attempt to dehumanize Black people, their humanity must be asserted. Or, as legal scholars say, “an unrebutted affidavit or declaration stands as truth.” If no counterargument is provided, the original stands or will be seen as true. Thus, there will always be those, like Ida B. Wells, who assert the humanity of Black people, not because they doubt it, but because it is essential to file a rebuttal to the baseless claims made against Black people, to fight racism on an intellectual front.
Racist language attempts to justify the existing racial hierarchy
In addition to encouraging violence against Black people, racist language also attempts to justify the existing racial hiearchy. Pastor Edward D. Grifin wrote in 1817 that “they who have wished to find an apology for the slave-trade . . . have cast the Africans into another species, and sorted them with the ape and the orang-outang. In every plea for the improvement of the African race, this, or an approach to this, is the prejudice with which we have chiefly to contend.” Rather than concede that slavery was a wicked, unjust social system, many White people preferred to spread racist, pseudoscientific ideas that implied Black people were subhuman, and thus it was okay to enslave them and deprive them of equal rights, something abolitionists vehemently disagreed with. For instance, Edward L. Pierce wrote in an 1863 edition of The Atlantic Monthly that Black people work for a living, showed a capacity for acquiring knowledge, were willing to “fight for their freedom,” and engage in “social and family relations,” making them “a constantly progressive race” of people. Nevertheless, the stereotypes that suggest Black people are inferior persist in the modern era.
For instance, calling Black people lazy, a common trope amongst white supremacists, is an effort to justify the racial wealth gap, where the median White household has “a net worth ten times that of the median Black household.” Instead of acknowledging that systemic racism, since America’s founding, has limited opportunities for Black people to acquire generational wealth, racists often assert that Black people are lazy, and should work harder if they want to catch up to the status White people have achieved. One study showed that, at the current rate of progress, “it will take 1,110 years until there is a Black-White parity in median income” without intervention, which naturally reminded me of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s quote that, “We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifices. Capitalism was built on the exploitation of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor, both black and white, both here and abroad.” Only a racist, or a poorly-educated person would suggest that Black people can work themselves out of a pit this deep. And besides, White people enslaved Black people for hundreds of years; the racial wealth gap exists today because Black people have been deprived of compensation for their efforts, not because they are lazy.
How the term “jogger” became a racial slur
When a 25-year-old Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, went jogging in Satilla Shores, a South Georgia neighborhood, several White men, Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory McMichael, and a neighbor confronted him about a series of robberies that allegedly took place in the area. When Arbery denied knowing anything about these break-ins, the McMichaels continued to follow him, eventually shooting and killed the unarmed Black jogger. A viral video of the events leading up to Arbery’s death made the case prominent, catching the eye of social activists as well as white supremacists who supported the McMichaels and spread misinformation in an effort to justify the public lynching.
Before Arbery’s death, Travis McMichael commented on a Facebook video showing a group of Black teenagers fighting a White teenager, “I say shoot tem all,” referring to them as a group of “monkeys.” Dehumanizing language became the prelude for the racial hate crime McMichael later took part in, a clear-cut example of the danger racist language poses, it primes the pump. As a result of this case, “they’ve celebrated Arbery’s death in the worst places on the internet, and turned his killers — a retired cop and his son — into white supremacist folk heroes.” Now, we can see the term “jogger” used instead of “nigger” in spaces where the latter would not be socially acceptable, a way of spreading racist ideas while trying to avoid any backlash.
Years later, white supremacists continue to use the term “jogger,” as a homage to the McMichaels, encouraging further violence. Even though Arbery never broke in anyone’s home, white supremacists continued to repeat the lie. One person suggested that a “jogger can break into your house, steal your dog, threaten to harm and kill you and an officer will ask if they are okay and probably make them a cup of tea with biscuits,” suggesting the system is “rigged against” White men. However, the truth of the matter is, the McMichaels chased Arbery, an unarmed Black man, accused him of committing crimes, and then executed him — this is a clear-cut lynching, not an injustice committed against White men. Also, the idea that police are kinder to Black people than White people is not supported by evidence, which reveals that police are much more likely to stop, detain, arrest, abuse, maim, and kill Black people than White people.
Using the term “jogger” as a racial slur shows how racist language evolves to fit the purpose of dehumanizing Black people, that the actual words are not as important as the intention when using them. Researchers suggested that “dehumanization is often evoked to explain instances of mass violence,” such as the brutality Black people suffered throughout the chattel slavery system, the Jim Crow Era, and continued through the prejudicial policing system and racist vigilantes. The reason why members of the Ku Klux Klan wore hoods to disguise themselves is the same reason some White people are using the term “jogger,” as a racial slur to maintain plausible deniability, all while promoting violence against Black people.
In America, we should keep in mind that anti-Black racism is more than an ideology; it’s a culture, complete with its own lexicon. President Andrew Jackson for instance, led the forced removal of Cherokee people from Southern states, enslaved hundreds of people, and petitioned the postmaster to “censor anti-slavery mailings from northern abolitionists.” Jackson realized that controlling the narrative was important, so he wanted to prevent Americans from freely accessing abolitionists papers, which described the harmful impact and immorality of the chattel slavery system. If Jackson’s efforts sound familiar it’s probably because the censorship campaign in America, following the 2020 protests raising awareness about police brutality and racial inequality, has limited access to anti-racist literature in public schools and libraries.
Instead of acknowledging that enslaving African people was wrong, many White colonists and early Americans employed dehumanizing language to describe Black people as inferior, and unworthy of freedom. Likewise, during the Jim Crow era, White people clung to racial stereotypes to justify racial segregation rather than embrace integration. Now, in the modern era, White people cling to racial stereotypes to justify the deadening status quo where Black people have less financial, social, and political power than Whitep eople. When insulated amongst like-minded individuals, racists may blatantly use racial slurs, but in circles where racism is not socially acceptable, they have to use their creativity, to mask their true intentions, hence the term “jogger,” being used in lieu of the n-word. Racist dog whistles like “law and order” and “tough on crime,” for instance are used to justify the overpolicing of Black communities. And any time someone questions whether such heavy-handed tactics are necessary, conservatives center the conversation around public safety, in the same way that southerners claimed that lynching Black men was only to ensure the safety of White women. We can’t ignore racist stereotypes, slurs, and coded lingo becaue racist terminology contributes to the disproportionate violence that Black people endure in American society.
🌹Learn more about the author here. 🖊Sign up to read all my stories and thousands more.