I want to ask a question...racism related

You’re right. I stated downthread that typing this all out gave me food for thought and I recognized it was wrong.

Dangerous Delusion

Brute to Thug


My Research Says Black Men



However, this image of Blackness ended after the American Civil War. During the period of Reconstruction (1865-1877), newly freed Blacks began to obtain social, economic, and political rights with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. This growth was seen in the building of Black communities such as Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was referred to as “Black Wall Street” (Pickens, 2013), the building of schools now known as Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs), and the election of the first two Black U.S. Senators in Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce.


This growth in power challenged White supremacy and created White fear of Black mobility. Particularly, wealthy Whites were fearful of political power newly freed Black people could acquire via voting, whereas poor Whites saw Blacks as competition in the labor force. Thus the rise of the Jim Crow era began, which was solidified by the Supreme Court ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson which stated, “separate but equal is constitutional.” This fear was met with a shift from Black people being viewed as compliant and submissive servants to savages and brute monsters.

Media portrayals of this mythical Black brute began to grow using the same initial science Jefferson and other Enlightenment-era theorists proclaimed, which was based on inaccurate anthropological and biological factors. This time, the argument was that Blacks were naturally more prone to violence and other aggressive behaviors. Charles H. Smith wrote in 1893, “A bad Negro is the most horrible creature upon the earth, the most brutal and merciless” (p. 181). This myth of cruelty and vicious disposition was directed towards White women. As the myth grew and stories spread about the savage Black brute, so did the occurrences of lynching. Lynching – the extrajudicial punishment – was ritualistic and struck fear into Black residents throughout the United States (Litwack, 2004). The most prevalent accusation was the rape or sexual assault of a White woman by a Black male. This allegation would have reverberating effects throughout entire communities. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a young White woman accused a Black male of sexual assault and roughly 300 Black people were killed and more than 9,000 people were left homeless after White mobs destroyed the Greenwood community (Pickens, 2013). Regardless of producing evidence or facts, White mobs would seize Black defendants or attack Black neighborhoods to seek out revenge for this crime.

The case of Sam Hose is an example of how different and various versions of the truth were reported. Hose killed his employer in self-defense after being threatened with a pistol. However newspapers wrote “a monster in human form” emerged, which detailed Hose as cold-blooded, killing his employer, and savagely raping his employer's wife. The report drove White fear to lynch Hose (Litwack, 2004). In reality, these charges were mere excuses to exercise exorbitant amounts of violence on Black people. The lynching of a Black body became a form of ritualistic violence where limbs and other body parts were taken as souvenirs. Litwack wrote:

After stripping Hose of his clothes and chaining him to a tree, the self-appointed executioners stacked kerosene-soaked wood high around him…they cut off his ears, fingers, and genitals, and skinned his face…the contortions of Sam Hose's body as the flames rose, distorting his features, causing his eyes to bulge out their sockets…Before Hose's body had even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs. (p. 123, 2004)

This overkill of the Black body became part of the racist ideology that was used to justify these acts of violence. This mythical act of Black savagery was situated in this idea of Black brutality and criminality that had no other recourse but death. A prominent Georgia woman wrote about the Sam Hose lynching, “The premeditated outrage on Mrs. Cranford was infinitely more intolerable than the murder of her husband” (Litwack, 2004). Hence, uncontrollable desires of Black males were illegal, criminal, and needed to be stopped through the use of physical force. Therefore, this justified vigilante justice in the name of keeping White womanhood pure.

The brute image of Black men became significant moving into the early 20th century, when fear was reinforced with depictions of Black men as harmful. The film Birth of a Nation, made in 1915, shows Black men as savages trying to attack White women. Their brutality is met with propaganda depicting the Ku Klux Klan as heroic and honorable. The result was Blackness becoming closely associated with criminalization. The criminalization of Blackness (Davis, 1998; Alexander, 2010; Muhammad, 2010) allowed for White supremacy to use Black bodies as their scapegoat for all problems, real or fictional. The driving forces behind Black criminality as savage and unmanageable were structurally reinforced by passage of stricter sentencing guidelines in prison and the expansion of the War on Drugs in the second half of the 20th century (Mauer, 2002). These programs and stricter prison guidelines exponentially grew the American prison system by 700% (Pew States, 2007). During this time campaigns for “tough on crime” policy emerged as the soundboard for elected officials. For example, George H.W. Bush's presidential run used a smear campaign tactic, famously known as the “Willie Horton” ad, where a Black prisoner's face was used to talk about his heinous crimes and Bush's opponents' soft-on-crime policy. While the ad overtly discusses a single Black man, the subliminal and larger take away is Willie Horton's face became synonymous with all Blackness. In short, the mythical brute became the realistic thug via the process of criminalization.

The image of Black men as brutes in society has a long legacy that begins with the social construction of race and brings us to the current period of mass incarceration. In the United States, Black men are six times as likely to go to jail or prison as White men (Gao, 2013). This disproportionate and unequal number indicates the skewed representation of Black men in U.S. prisons. However, the argument is shifted to no longer being about race but about crime and community safety. This negation of understanding the historical link between “brute” and “thug” marginalizes the significant role race plays.

Lastly, a prime example of how the brute image still thrives in society is the April 2008 Vogue magazine cover of professional basketball player LeBron James holding super model Gisele Bündchen. The image of LeBron giving a menacing look while Gisele is in his arms shares a strikingly eerily similarity to a World War I poster that depicts a gorilla holding a White woman with the title “Destroy this Mad Brute” (Shea, 2008). These types of images that draw on past racial stereotypes and myths reinforce this criminalization, and are now coded with terms such as “thug” today. While historically in America overt racist language was socially acceptable, there has been a cultural shift of social intolerance to this blatant racist behavior. This does not mean that racism or discriminatory actions have been eradicated but rather driven beneath the surface and reemerged as coded language, gestures, signs, and symbols to indicate difference. Terms such as “thug,” “ghetto,” “hood,” “sketchy,” and “shady” are all examples of coded language that are used to refer to or speak of Blackness without overtly sounding racially prejudiced. Fraternities on college campuses throw “Pimps and Hos” parties where stereotypes of Black people as pimps or prostitutes, exemplifying characters from the film Superfly (1972), also lack the language of race but show in physical gesture and imagery the racism encoded in the details.

Over the last several years with the proliferation of social media, many more events are documented and shared via social networking sites (Yar, 2012; Smiley, 2015). Some of these events captured on video are cases involving unarmed Black males being killed by law enforcement agents. While some videos show the disturbing death, such as Eric Garner, others show the aftermath like that of Michael Brown's body in the street. These deaths and others have sparked outrage across communities looking for justice and accountability of law enforcement's excessive force when dealing with Black people.

Furthermore, this paper looks at how these Black males who are killed by law enforcement are turned into a “thug” (the modern day “brute”), which seemingly tries to justify their death or personal contribution to their demise. Beyond this, a “blame game” effect occurs that shifts culpability from the perpetrator to the victim. In this case, the blame moves from law enforcement agents to the Black males who have been killed.

Not true. Not in my case. I also said in another post that it wasn’t about his skin color, it was about his attire. I categorized a PERSON based on what they were WEARING. and I have since recognized it as wrong.

I've "classified" a lot of people as a "thug"==for instance, the guy that lives about 2 houses down from me, and on the opposite side of the street. He wears his pants down so far he might as well not wear them. He wears ugly briefs that I'd rather not see. He's verbally abusive to his wife (or whoever it is that lives in his house). He's verbally abusive to the children that live in that house--I don't know if they are his or hers, or both of theirs. He lets his pit bulls run the neighborhood, and he uses abusive language to the sweet old man neighbor that lives next door to him. Oh, did I mention he's white? Well, he is. and yes, he's a thug. The police are there every other month or so--probably abuse. He's a real case. He also has his radio on so loud that the neighbors are subjected to abusive language in what he calls "music." I'd trade him in on a new neighbor anytime!!

Olan that was a good article. Some of it reminds me of the scare tactics going right now in regards to immigrants. They are all rapists and criminals, you know.

This kind of hot button fear-mongering has gone on forever. Any time one group of people wants to justify “ othering” another group. I remember the Willie Horton ads. Good example, and effective.

I am not clear if you intended to quote me and then talk about videos. I have no idea what videos you are talking about. My link was in reference to healthcare treatments being different for patients depending on whether they are black or not.

Here is my post:
Actually, they have done experiments and black men in virtue of just being black get treated differently. Black doctors have said they have been pulled over just for driving a nice car.

This is even more interesting, they get treated differently as patients even.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2016/4/5/11369158/race-bias-medicine-pnas-study-black-