On The Historical Significance of Present Hatred
CW: Racism, Xenophobia, Anti-Black Racism, Islamophobia, Anti-Semitism, Hate Crimes
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Over the past few months, I have been reflecting on where this nation has been, and the signs of where it is headed. Everyone has heard the adage “history repeats itself,” but the general public seems unwilling to admit that the ugliest parts of our history do, in fact, threaten repetition.
A few weeks ago, a young Black man in Lake Stevens, Washington was found hanging from a tree. His name was Ben Keita. He was 18 years old. He was Muslim. Initially ruled a suicide, his cause of death is now under investigation and the Council of American-Islamic Relations has requested that the FBI review the case.
For people of color, and in particular the Black community, Ben Keita’s death is not a single occurrence. His body mirrors the image of thousands of young Black people before him, potentially taken by the same means. While Ben Keita’s cause of death has not been conclusively determined, headlines about his death implicate a long history of violence against Black people in the United States. This history — these “means” — refer to lynching.
Ida B. Wells published The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States in 1895. In it, Wells catalogued the deaths of Black people by public lynching, categorizing each occurrence by the purported offense. In 1895, a majority of these lynchings were performed on suspicion of rape or murder. But, as Wells noted, these state-sanctioned spectacles of violence were often conducted without a trial. Wells wrote critically about these charges, particularly with regard to lynchings citing rape as the causal crime: “Does [the Southern white man] mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states describe as such? Not by any means. With the Southern white man, any mésalliance existing between a white woman and a colored man is a sufficient foundation for the charge of rape.” The judicial process we understand as a modern trial did not exist for the individuals on the red record. For instances, names were not even taken for a number of the recorded lynchings. Those persons were counted along with the others, and listed on the record instead as “unknown.”
All of this is significant because of the way these stories have been communicated through generations. Chances are, whether they are aware of specific historical citations or not, a person of color watching the news of Ben Keita’s death is far more likely to make a connection to lynching than a white person reluctant to even use the term “hate crime.” That lingering question’s existence, especially in this political climate, warrants recognition. Historian Kidada Williams wrote in her piece “Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching,” that “[n]oticeably absent [from historical accounts of lynchings], however, is substantive analysis of how victims’ families had their lives transformed by it.”[1] The descendants of these victims, however, are forever changed as well. For them, this legacy is haunting and recurring.
As a society, we discuss lynchings as a relic of a barbaric past. But less than 100 years ago, three men in Duluth, Minnesota were lynched by police, again on suspicion of rape. In 1937, a woman in Florida asked the NAACP to help her investigate the possibility that her son had been lynched. After looking into it, they did locate evidence that he had been lynched in their records.[2] Throughout President Obama’s tenure in office, multiple individuals hanged him in effigy across the country, claiming various forms of political speech. These stories have significance. They harbor evidence of hatred, pain, and unfeeling cowardice. We as a country do not have the right to downplay, discount, or forget them.
Ben Keita’s death has occurred at a time where even liberal centers of the country, like Washington, have been replete with xenophobia and hatred, especially toward immigrant and Muslim communities. While some outlets have celebrated individuals for protecting their Muslim brethren, we are also seeing an enormous rise in violence toward the Muslim community. We cannot allow stories about landmark cases and daily acts of kindness obscure underlying violence that necessitates them. Xenophobia is not a minority sentiment when it has a megaphone in the political sphere.
Also in the last two weeks, this nation’s president announced a task force to publicly report crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. He called this group “VOICE,” the Victims Of Immigrant Crime Engagement office. He invited victims of these crimes to tell their stories at the Joint Address to Congress. He also employed this tactic during his campaign, with sexual assault victims used as the unfortunate props. Historically, this new task force looks similar to the anti-Semitic propaganda used by he Nazis during World War II. Also alarming is the fact that studies show immigrants are not only less likely to commit crime, but capable of lowering crime in the communities they join. But these are parts of our history that the public majority is not aware enough to push back on.
Instead, public rhetoric is teaching citizens to fear people they can other, a familiar formula for racism and xenophobia. As we watch, the branches of our government are fighting over the separation and exclusion of individuals based on their race or religious affiliation. Young Black and brown folks are turning up hurt or worse as a result of historically familiar forms of violence. Yet somehow it still takes a concerted effort to convince some people that we, as a country, have seen this before; that we have made these mistakes, or condemned other world leaders for doing the very same.
The clues to what our current political atmosphere can, will, and is creating are apparent. They are foreshadowed in our history, and in the collective pain and memories of communities who have felt this before. The problem is that people either do not know, or ignore that evidence, sitting instead in an uncomfortable complicity. When we are forced to confront atrocities, but can place them at a more comfortable, historical distance, we as humans tend to better acknowledge wrongdoing. This cannot be our only method of introspection. Americans, especially those non-minorities who remain silent in the wake of impending repetition, should know their history. Moreover, they should fear it.
In that sense, and only that sense, fear can be productive for the sake of justice. We as a country should be calling upon our neighbors to recognize the heinous weight of our past errors and choose to do better by them. Now is not the time for ignorance, or for unproductive waves of guilt. There is a need for accountability. And there is immense, untapped power in the ability of individuals to push against institutions furthering white supremacy using historical significance. The overwhelming mistakes in our history should hold weight in every phone call to a legislator, every protest or march for a community, and in every conversation about social change. But perhaps most importantly, we should trust that when a minority community cries out at injustice, they speak from a place of knowledge. Racism and xenophobia are not the ghosts of a generation past. These communities have felt this before, and it is our job to listen and learn.
[1] Kidada E. Williams, “Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching,” The Journal of American History, Oxford University Press, December 2014, at 856.
[2] Williams, at 856.
