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Not intended to be a disagreement! It was intended as more an elaboration/expansion, with a point of a personal pet peave (historical anachronisms).
There was a period when the fear being the point is true, but the anachronism is when that was- which was not mid-century Jim Crow as known or protested against in the mid-Century US. Fear of lynchings ceased to be a point when lynchings stopped being any sort of coordinated or even common point, which it hadn't been for the better part of a generation by the time the modern conception of Jim Crow south was cemented in popular memory. No one alive today has any living memory of lynching as an organized suppression policy in the American South (or anywhere else).
To draw back a few posts higher, the people deriving eliminationist intent in the current era are even further removed from a period when lynching was a point, and lynching as a means of social control wasn't even living memory for most of the US during the period most contemporary progressives are thinking off as the Jim Crowe South that the Civil Rights were against. Appealing to modern fears of Jim Crowe returning and/or lynchings as a means to subjugate blacks and/or eliminationist fears is as historically illiterate as trying to frame, oh, muslim immigration into Europe as related to the Crusades. The later may have been more generations ago, but it was generations ago, and is neither living memory or lived experience to justify current concerns.
There wasn't a statement that the fear was extinguished by the 1950s. There is a statement that lynchings were not happening as a social control measure in the 1950s, and hadn't been for decades, and wasn't living memory for much of the relevant generational cohort (including, sadly, Emitt Till).
That depends on what the fear was, precisely. If the fear was simply dangers from racism, sure, not unjustified. If the fear was specifically lynching, that would have been unjustified, even as that's what ended up happening, because the data did not (and does not, even with advantages of hindsight) support that specific fear at the time, and even less so since.
That Emitt Till was killed by lynching does not change that he was one of only 3 african americans lynched in a 5-year period (52-56), all three of them in the year of his own murder. It was shocking precisely because it was so abnormal, even for area and not just the era, not because it was even a quietly-tolerated norm. Emitt Till form of murderer was not some deliberate community act of social control- Emitt Till's murder was an asocial act even within the society that it occurred within, even one as unsympathetic and bigoted and fuck-the-outsiders as that town.
Sure. And the proper course of action since the abduction panics has still been to have children go outside and touch grass, and for people consumed by visceral horror at the extremely unlikely to be disabused of the disproportionate focus and weight they assign to it. Likewise, the appropriate response to any other unsupported fear is to... not support it.
This is true regardless of whether it's fear of COVID, or fear of muslim extremists, or fear of germs. People absolutely have died from all of these- tens of thousands more than were ever lynched in the United States- but no matter how visceral the fear, it's not valid just because it's closely held and driving changes in behavior and perception. It's precisely because it drives changes in behavior and perception that it's so harmful to the people who hold such views, because despite what post-modernists theories imply, perceptions are not reality.
The fear of lynching was not the social control in the 1950s, unless you want to diminish the concept of social control to a nothingism.
This is where we get back into anochronisms, and the difference between popular memory and actual policies, which we've already bantered on, particularly in relation to the original higher-level post, which was about fears cited in the 21st century.
If we ignore banal insider-outsider cultural insularism dynamics, sure, but I'm not sure why we would if we're concerned about truth and accuracy.
It's not exactly hard to find societies or contexts who will disapprove of a behavior on their own terms, but simultaneously band together against a hostile outsider who points at the same thing. We're not even a month past one of the most notable examples of this in recent memory, and while I find the recent widespread support of Hamas disgusting, I'd be pretty unsupported to accuse, say, the average pro-Palestinian Ivy League student who insists we shouldn't judge how people fight against colonialism of having a social norm of killing jews. I'd have many well supported negative descriptors, but not that one.
Culturally insular communities circling the wagons against outsider attention and opinions in the face of known and acknowledged sins is incredibly common social behavior that can be found across geography and time periods when people prioritize group-affiliation over universal-level principles when the two conflict. But prioritizing group dynamics doesn't mean that the principle violation is in fact a norm- it just means that behaviors changed based on who is perceived to be watching/affecting the context. When the group-affiliation context subsides, the norms of the, well, normal society reassert themselves.
As ugly as 'I'm not going to conceed they're wrong to you' can be, it has relatively little to do with the specific sins at hand being socially acceptable, and far more to do with the fact that there isn't a shared sense of society between the insider and the outsider watching and accusing. Unsurprisingly, when outsiders come in significant numbers and profile to make a major media event, social dynamics may be different than after the leave and are no longer making a spectacle of it. Just as the expression 'you are what you do when no one else is looking' is a description of individual character norms, there is an inverse to it as well, where you are also what you do when the out-group you hate/who hates you is not looking.
When loathing to concede to the loathed outgroup outweighs moral consistency, I'd certainly agree that's a moral failing in and of itself, but in such contexts the specific immoral act is often irrelevant. The people who would reject in-group culpability for a murder would likewise reject in-group culpability for stealing candy from a child. This doesn't mean they also have a quietly-tolerated norm for stealing candy from babies- it means they have a very-strong norm of not conceeding moral faults to the outgroup(s).
Fortunately, our statements are not in conflict. Unfortunately, Emitt Till was murdered despite how rational expecting him to return home alive and well would have been.
As I'm not intending to be condescending, I would not know, though I am aware that saying that can itself come across as condescending, which itself is a no-win situation. If I do not contest the characterization of myself, I implicitly concede the accusation, but if I try to contest on my own views, it can be perceived as condescending. Such is life.
My point of framing is that I dispute part of earlier claims (that lynching was used as policy tool of social control into the mid-century), dispute the relevance of a supporting argument to that claim (the fears of the afraid do not themselves support claims of any particular policy by the persecutors absent other evidence), and disagree of your analysis on social dynamics of norms and value (that the acquittal representing a norm for murder as opposed to an in-group/out-group conflict tribalism). Reminders for truth and accuracy matter for all of these, as subjectivity and emotion can compromise assessments, and an original point of my own is that common popular understandings of the crime, and the period, are significantly compromised by anachronisms born of modern emotive politics.
As does the accusation of condescension when none was intended... which is ironically demonstrative of part of the discussion, of the difference between perception by a victim and the purpose by a perpetrator.
I do appreciate the appreciation, and do wish to be clear that I appreciate your participation (in this discussion and in the forum more generally) as well.
The disagreement isn't on your broader point on the relevance of political violence to fear, but rather the timing of what lynching's 'peak era' is, and thus it's applicability to other times and places. This is where we get to anachronisms, the disparities between perceptions (especially politically-resonant perceptions more than a half-century after the facts) and realities, the conflations of different sorts of actions, and so on. I remain focused on lynchings and not other forms of violence not because other forms of violence weren't prevelant, but because they were even as lynching was not come the mid-century as it- far too belatedly- followed the trend of white lynchings by a quarter of a century. The socio-political dynamics of lynchings, as a specific sort of crime and cultural norm, are separate from other forms of racial discrimination and violence of the eras. I do not find them equivalent and interchangeable, for the same reasons I do not find other categories of crimes with different severities and political dynamics equivalent.
For a meta context, this is a more general tendency of mine as well. I tend towards disliking these conflations of events and purposes across decades and different actors in different contexts well, unless there is a generally strong continuity of points to justify the comparisons. I find it unhealthy for civil discussions (where historic grievances are re-raised and conflated with domestic disputes in innaccurate ways) and for understanding situations and histories that are often highly emotive in the present.
And that ending is something I flatly disagree on. I'd even go so far as to say it's an out-group characterization of group-first loyalties by a principles-first alignment (as in, you value principles more than abstract group loyalty), and I say that as someone who prefers principle-first approaches to justice issues over tribalism. I take a position that when people prioritize groupings over values, it doesn not mean they suddenly adopt/identify with the values of the abberant members of the group- that would counter the premise of group-first overriding principles-first cultures, which is reflecting of trying to impose a principles-first paradigm on people who don't share it.
I fully agree that they identified with the murderers, yes, but identify with the motives, I disagree on. I disagree it was about saving the in-group's face, rather than defying the out-group, and I maintain that this distinction matters more than any commonality of the perpetrators motives across the grouping. This is without even discussing practicalities in specific contexts, such as key actor analysis of specific cases. This is a disagreement on social dynamics assessments, of group identities versus principles, which seems foundational enough that I doubt we will reconcile to a common position or characterization of what the dominant truth/factor in characterizing the situation is.
Since I suspect we'll just revolve around this well past the thread's expiration date, especially if foundational positions are divergent, I'll freely (and sincerely) offer you a last position point if you'd like, with a respect departure of ways.
Have a good day and week and rest of the year!
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