America's Obsession with Black Violence is Misplaced

History Reveals How Violence Has Been Used by White People with Little Accountability

The longer I live, the more irritated I become when I hear reporters or read stories about the violence committed, or feared, by Black people.

In this country, we have “Stand Your Ground” laws that allow people to carry guns and use them if they feel like their lives are in danger. The refrain, “I have the right to defend myself” is commonly heard, and is not unreasonable – yet, it seems to apply only to white people, who at the same time they proclaim their right to defend themselves, proclaim or intimate that Black people are so inherently violent that it is foolish to suggest that using violence against them is wrong. (https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/16/us/philando-castile-trial-verdict)

If the truth be told, however, it is white violence that has been and remains a mainstay of American culture. White violence has been tolerated and carried out in this country against people of color, most often, but not limited to, Indigenous Americans and African Americans.

Partly because of the support of the Roman Catholic Church’s “Doctrine of Discovery,” European explorers believed they had a mandate to kill any group of people who would not agree to convert to Christianity and take their land. The Doctrine of Discovery, issued in 1493, was written by several popes in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, including Nicholas V, and Alexander VI. A series of papal bulls provided legal and religious justification for explorers to claim “non-Christian” lands. Under Pope Alexander VI, Spain gave Christopher Columbus the authority to claim any land he “discovered” as belonging to Spain, and to subjugate its people. That subjugation frequently resulted in mass violence if the people of that land would not acquiesce to the demand for them to abolish their religion and become Christian.

State-sanctioned violence by white people against Black people gained momentum after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. White violence against African Americans was, of course, a glaring and bitter reality during slavery, but after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, white anger erupted on a new level. Incensed that the formerly enslaved now had rights that whites felt they did not deserve, and also because their freedom affected the ability of them to re-establish their wealth, they attacked Black people with little fear of being stopped or arrested by law enforcement; in fact, law enforcement was often involved. Mobs of white people thronged sites where there was going to be a lynching; it was used to intimidate Blacks into remembering what the white supremacist system said they were. White mobs terrorized entire Black communities. A Black person did not have to have committed a crime; a suggestion that a crime had been committed was enough for horrendous violence to be carried out, many times resulting their receiving severe beatings by whites and, unfortunately, death.

After Reconstruction, efforts to keep Black people “in their place” were usually violent. Under the Convict Leasing practice, Black people could be arrested and beaten for the most minor “offenses,” and then made to work in inhumane situations for the rest of their lives, with the threat of white violence used as the ultimate tool to keep them “in line”. Author Douglas Blackmon’s book, Slavery by Another Name does an excellent job of describing that system and what it meant for Black people.

Whites used violence to destroy entire communities, including Rosewood in Florida and Greenwood in Oklahoma. They used guns and fire and turpentine bombs to rip Black bodies apart and demolish their homes, businesses, schools, and churches. Seldom, if ever, was anyone held accountable. In the 1921 Greenwood massacre, more than 300 Black people were murdered by an angry white mob. Though it was white people who instigated the attack, over 6,000 Black Tulsans were arrested. Nine thousand African Americans were left homeless, the result of their homes being burned and bombed by the mob.

In January 1923, the city of Rosewood, Florida, was destroyed by a white mob. In July of that year, there was an attack on African Americans in Catcher, Arkansas. There was the Elaine Massacre in 1919, the Bogalusa Labor Massacre, also in 1919, and the Ococee Massacre in 1920. In these instances and so many more, white mobs committed heinous violence and walked away without anyone being arrested and charged with a crime.

Black men who fought in this country’s wars were subjected to violence by whites who resented them and who did not want them to forget who they were in this country, regardless of how much they were treated as human beings while fighting in Europe. A case that resulted in national attention was the blinding of Isaac Woodard by law enforcement (https://time.com/5950641/blinding-isaac-woodard/), but the fact is that whites carried out violence against Black soldiers in numbers that are still emerging. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/30/magazine/black-soldiers-wwii-racism.html)

And yet, despite this history (and there is so much more to this narrative than there is room to reveal in this essay), it is the cry of white people voicing their fear of violence by African Americans that we hear today. Blacks are made out to be inherently bad and naturally violent; when police kill them, the belief is that they deserved it. The fact that many people condone the mass violence carried out by the primarily white supporters of the current president on January 6, 2021, is a travesty against the principle of “law and order.” The truth of the matter is that when it has come to white violence carried out against African Americans, be it by a mob, law enforcement, or white individuals, too few people seem to care, and conversely, too many people refuse to budge from their conviction that African Americans deserve the violence they receive from law enforcement or from people who are “afraid” when they see a Black person.

Self-defense is a lifted as a right, and proponents of the Second Amendment use that principle as the reason why there is not and should not be gun control, but the truth is, despite there being “open carry” laws in many states in this country, Black people defending themselves is often not respected or recognized, while many whites get away with violence against Black people, using the self-defense argument. (https://momentum.medium.com/why-white-americans-see-black-self-defense-as-ultimate-violence-2c24c871e7b3)

Recently, there was a tragic situation that resulted in a white teen being killed by a Black classmate. (https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/karmelo-anthony-suspect-in-fatal-frisco-track-meet-stabbing-released-on-bond/) Karmelo Anthony claimed he was defending himself, but in a trial yet to begin, it is doubtful that a jury will believe him. The circumstances of the tragedy do not matter; the race of the young man who is accused of killing the young white man will be a far heavier determinant in deciding the case than other factors.

I wish that people would think about the culture of white violence in this country the next time they hear a nervous reporter say, after a Black person has been shot and killed by a white person or mob, that they hope “there will not be violence.”

For white people in this country, violence has always been central and perhaps necessary, in their minds, to protect themselves and their families, but this country will not allow that statement or belief to be assigned and used equally by Black people. In this country, the narrative about what and who Black people are has shaped and cemented beliefs about them, regardless of the truth. Despite their history of using violence to control others, too many white people still look at Black people and think, “danger,” i.e., that they are inherently violent and must be stopped.

And that does not and has not bode well for Black people, nor will it ever.