originally written June 4th, 2023
There is nothing worse than a disingenuous argument, an argument that believes it is nuanced, maybe slightly ambiguous, worst of all one that presents itself as being clever, so clever that it’s cute. There is also nothing more disingenuous than the person giving said argument, thinking or believing that you are dumb. I experienced such an argument a couple of years ago when a close friend of mine said, ‘there were more hangings than lynchings.’ The argument had me feeling like he I thought he was Bambi on ice, believing that I would forgive the clumsiness because he and his argument were just so cute and adorable. More hangings than lynchings isn’t that cute. There is nothing cute, adorable, nor tolerable about the disingenuous. To be disingenuous is to fundamentally be lazy, in my opinion and most people are disingenuous when they pretend not to know when they do know, and by consequence they avoid anything, or something of consequence. Be in it in minor or major. However there is something more insidious about the disingenuous, yes they are lazy but they also get away with it, and if they have some social advantage we let them get away with it and that has to stop. Let me first explain the the difference between a hanging and a lynching.
I have been aware of violence against Black people for all of my life, I was lucky enough to have a mother and father who made sure that I was always aware of it and would never look away from it. My mother showed me places and gave me books, my father beat me himself, so I would personally understand violence and the trauma that comes along with it. As a child one of the first books that my mother had and that my mother would let me page through was “The Black Book”. It is the first place that I saw this image.
And yes I’ve used this in a previous post, you should check it out. I would be lying to you if I told you that I remember exactly what I thought about this image as a child, but I do remember what stood out to me, was the smile on the mens faces and the curiosity of the little boy, in the picture. The look of curiosity he had on his face the anxiousness to see the burning body of a Black man. Of course at the time I knew very little about “lynching”, I was six it probably wasn’t until four years later that I started asking questions about Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”, you see my mother would play certain records when she was in certain moods on certain days and I remember asking her about “Strange Fruit”. You should really read my earlier post. Anyway I won’t go into the song too much but let me say this, one of the most popular jazz singers of her generation is known for a song about lynching in America. Many people know/knew this about Billie Holiday and my friend knew this but wants to tell me that there were more hangings than lynchings, then why didn’t Billie Holiday make a fucking song about hangings instead of lynchings. We will come back to Billie Holiday later. The hanging of white men or women for that matter were done more often than not in the arena of due process, The lynchings, i.e. killing of Black people, was done in the arena of racism. Meaning in the example of Emmit Till if you whistled at a white woman in America and you were Black you deserved to die. No due process needed, no authority, we’ll just call that authority of “whiteness.”
There is a thread through all of my most recent Blogs as there is a thread throughout history of racism, for anyone who believes that racism ended in America, they have to tell me when. Because if they think it was with the election of Barack Obama then, well that sh*t ain’t true. While Barack Obama was president there were racist tropes, effigies, of him being a monkey, gorilla, of him being hung. And those that made these physical tropes and effigies always seem to have a smile on their face or a look that I’ve seen before oh wait where in the f*ck have I seen these faces before. (Please see photo above)
I’m not sure what it is that exists in the White American mostly male psyche, that wants or needs to control others including their own women. Why they are so hell bent on socially engineering American society just so they can feel “comfortable” and deferred to in any given moment. Why they need to return to the fascism of the Jim Crow south but want to do this under the guise of democratic process. This is detailed and outlined in Project 2025.
Bus Stop Judo 