Mark Naison: Owning Up to Our Racial Fears ... Thoughts on the Trial and Conviction of John White
[Mark Naison is Professor of African American Studies and History, Fordham University.]
A former student's appeal to "own up to" the racial baggage we all carry has inspired me to go public with my thoughts about the manslaughter conviction of John White, a black Long Island father who was defending his son from a mob of angry white teenagers who had come to his home shouting racial epithets
There are many things about this incident which should give pause to anyone who thinks we live in a color blind society and have comfortably left our tragic racial history behind. First of all, let's look at Mr. White's actions. Here is an African American man, successful in his work, loved and respected by his coworkers, who buys a house in a white suburb, seems to get along with his neighbors and yet keeps an arsenal of guns in his houses, waiting for the moment for someone to rob him or for a mob of angry whites to come to his house to do harm to him and his family.
There is something profoundly sad here, not only about the father's actions that fateful night, but by the racial fantasies and fears that led up to it. In the deepest level of his consciousness, this successful, well adjusted, highly integrated black man still believed that whites were out to get him. Where did this belief come from? Was it something implanted in him from his years growing up in the Jim Crow South and remained there thirty years later--a remnant of what some scholars call "Post Slave Syndrome-- or was it continuosly reinforced and reaffirmed by his daily interactions with whites in the New York metropolitan area. Something happened to make this highly assimilated black man believe that whites were out to get him, physcially as well as psychically, and to make sure that if they did, they were not going to escape without consequence
Was this an irrational observation? We may disapprove of his method of dealing with those feelings- the stockpiling of loaded weapons- but were the feelings themselves divorced from reality?. Did this man understand, better than we do, that whites, even seemingly liberal whites, are filled with fear and rage and contempt towards blacks, probably in ways they themselves don't understand or acknowledge, and are capable of great cruelty and violence toward their black neighbors in a moment of crisis.
By all accounts, this was a man who was WAITING for the very moment that arrived that tragic evening, he was EXPECTING it. To me, that is a very sad commentary on the racial atmosphere in our nation Have we really left our tragic history behind, or do many people- of all races- still see Black people as responsible for everything wrong in American society, and have fantasies and fears about Blackness and Black people planted deep in their imagination
A look at the mob of white teenagers who came to the house that evening to call out the man's son offers us little grounds for reassurance. They went to an integrated high school, had black teachers and teammates, and didn't see themselves as "racists." Yet when a black kid they knew got angry at a white girl one of them was dating, they racialized an interpersonal conflict so powerfully that they turned themseves into a mob shouting racial epithets and became, in that moment, exactly the avenging force that the young man's father had armed himself against.
How did this happen?. How did a group of young men turn themselves into the embodiment of their black neighbor's fears and fantasies?
Could it be that they had the same fears and fantasies, only in reverse? Did they see black people, even the black people they interacted with every day, even their black friends, as the carriers of a fatal character flaw--a permanent stain, if you will-- that could instantly turn them into rapists and murderers, people who would destroy every community they were part of? Was their hatred and fear of back people so deep, and so hidden in their subconcious, that it came out in a moment of crisis in ways that they never could have predicted, and didn't understand? Although I wasn't there, and didn't know the people involved, I would have to say "Yes"
What makes the Long Island incident so tragic is that it took place among people who publicly would say they had worked through their racial attitudes well enough to live together peacefully and harmoniously. And maybe, for the most part, they had. But lurking beneath the surface was a dangerous and corrosive brew of racial feelings, something many Black people sense is deeply implanted in their white neighbors because they have internalized it themselves.
If we don't acknowlege these feelings, and try to loosen their hold on our imaginations as well as our conscious actions, they will come back to haunt us, even to destroy us, in moments when we let our guard down.
Our laws may be color blind, but our fantasies, fears and imagination most emphatically are not.
A former student's appeal to "own up to" the racial baggage we all carry has inspired me to go public with my thoughts about the manslaughter conviction of John White, a black Long Island father who was defending his son from a mob of angry white teenagers who had come to his home shouting racial epithets
There are many things about this incident which should give pause to anyone who thinks we live in a color blind society and have comfortably left our tragic racial history behind. First of all, let's look at Mr. White's actions. Here is an African American man, successful in his work, loved and respected by his coworkers, who buys a house in a white suburb, seems to get along with his neighbors and yet keeps an arsenal of guns in his houses, waiting for the moment for someone to rob him or for a mob of angry whites to come to his house to do harm to him and his family.
There is something profoundly sad here, not only about the father's actions that fateful night, but by the racial fantasies and fears that led up to it. In the deepest level of his consciousness, this successful, well adjusted, highly integrated black man still believed that whites were out to get him. Where did this belief come from? Was it something implanted in him from his years growing up in the Jim Crow South and remained there thirty years later--a remnant of what some scholars call "Post Slave Syndrome-- or was it continuosly reinforced and reaffirmed by his daily interactions with whites in the New York metropolitan area. Something happened to make this highly assimilated black man believe that whites were out to get him, physcially as well as psychically, and to make sure that if they did, they were not going to escape without consequence
Was this an irrational observation? We may disapprove of his method of dealing with those feelings- the stockpiling of loaded weapons- but were the feelings themselves divorced from reality?. Did this man understand, better than we do, that whites, even seemingly liberal whites, are filled with fear and rage and contempt towards blacks, probably in ways they themselves don't understand or acknowledge, and are capable of great cruelty and violence toward their black neighbors in a moment of crisis.
By all accounts, this was a man who was WAITING for the very moment that arrived that tragic evening, he was EXPECTING it. To me, that is a very sad commentary on the racial atmosphere in our nation Have we really left our tragic history behind, or do many people- of all races- still see Black people as responsible for everything wrong in American society, and have fantasies and fears about Blackness and Black people planted deep in their imagination
A look at the mob of white teenagers who came to the house that evening to call out the man's son offers us little grounds for reassurance. They went to an integrated high school, had black teachers and teammates, and didn't see themselves as "racists." Yet when a black kid they knew got angry at a white girl one of them was dating, they racialized an interpersonal conflict so powerfully that they turned themseves into a mob shouting racial epithets and became, in that moment, exactly the avenging force that the young man's father had armed himself against.
How did this happen?. How did a group of young men turn themselves into the embodiment of their black neighbor's fears and fantasies?
Could it be that they had the same fears and fantasies, only in reverse? Did they see black people, even the black people they interacted with every day, even their black friends, as the carriers of a fatal character flaw--a permanent stain, if you will-- that could instantly turn them into rapists and murderers, people who would destroy every community they were part of? Was their hatred and fear of back people so deep, and so hidden in their subconcious, that it came out in a moment of crisis in ways that they never could have predicted, and didn't understand? Although I wasn't there, and didn't know the people involved, I would have to say "Yes"
What makes the Long Island incident so tragic is that it took place among people who publicly would say they had worked through their racial attitudes well enough to live together peacefully and harmoniously. And maybe, for the most part, they had. But lurking beneath the surface was a dangerous and corrosive brew of racial feelings, something many Black people sense is deeply implanted in their white neighbors because they have internalized it themselves.
If we don't acknowlege these feelings, and try to loosen their hold on our imaginations as well as our conscious actions, they will come back to haunt us, even to destroy us, in moments when we let our guard down.
Our laws may be color blind, but our fantasies, fears and imagination most emphatically are not.