Post by sudan on Jan 20, 2007 3:06:10 GMT -5
How is The Murder of James Byrd Jr. Relevant to the Study of English?
© Eva Maximea
When we study English we study words. We ask which words are most effective to communicate our message, and why are they chosen? We choose them to stimulate visual, auditory, emotional and visceral reactions. Before we had racism as we know it today, we had language and we had economics. Language facilitates economics and without language - well, currency is language too, and Africans were reduced to a form of currency in the context of chattel slavery.
The powerful dominant group fights dirty, using tools like racism in order to maintain the status quo. There must be an underclass, disenfranchised and ostracized for capitalism to function, with a small percentage of people controlling the vast majority of the world's property and resources. Once colonialism took root in the colonies, the ideology of 'white' racial superiority became the single most important shackle in the Imperialist coffle.
James Byrd Jr. died to remind us all that nigger is not just a nasty thing to call someone. Nigger is the name of the most powerless, brutally devastated human being we can't even imagine. James Byrd Jr. died on June 7, 1998; the victim of three white males, the first of whom to be convicted is John King. This is a man who proudly bears tattoos depicting "Nazi-type SS lightning bolts...and a large patch of the Confederate Knights of America, a white supremacist group, on the side of his stomach, underlined with 'Aryan Pride', ( www.cnn.com/US/9902/17/dragging.death.03/index.html), 3/1/1999 page 1of 4).
The murder of James Byrd Jr. is euphemistically referred to by media and popular discourse as 'The Dragging Death'. Black rights advocates have insisted on naming this murder a modern day lynching. I include several news stories from CNN, as well as a copy of the affidavit filed by a Jasper police officer. The details of this murder are listed on those pages and while they are very relevant, they tend to exoticize the issue at hand. Jasper County Sheriff Billy Rowles said "[w]e have an isolated incident. Guys who are not our kind of people did some stupid stuff." ( www.cnn.com/US/9806/09/texas.decapitation/index.html).
This is hardly a sensitive analysis, but the point is that while that particular form of violence is relatively isolated as an incident, the attitudes that made it possible are not. In a police affidavit, Shawn Berry one of the accused, is characterized as a reluctant participant in the grisly violence. "When Berry asked King what he was doing, King replied, ' Fixin' to scare the shit out of this nigger '". Berry claims that "King told Berry, 'you're just as guilty as we are. Besides, the same thing could happen to a nigger lover...' ( www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jasper5.html) 3/9/1999 page 5). Herein lies the context of this brutal slaying.
The "Jolly Nigger Toy Savings Bank" Trading Card is depicted in colour at (http://www.tradecards.com/ ). It is described there as "one of the most outrageous examples of nineteenth-century white attitudes toward blacks that you'll see on a trade card". The subject of the site is trading cards; the fact that we are looking at the head of a black man caricatured and objectified as a repository for coins goes without comment. The objectification of black people, especially through the use of dehumanizing, pejorative language is acutely grim at a current website called "Aherne the Nigger Butcher" at (See Reference). The title of the site says it all, but I have attached a copy of the page for those who continue to believe that words such as nigger, live in a sterile vacuum, out of context and without the capacity to incite real harm.
The historical and contemporary usage of pejorative language by the dominant society plays an important part in the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and attitudes. When racism works and exists in business and in our institutions, it is largely silent. When racism arises casually between workers, school children or pedestrians, it is usually first expressed through pejorative language, a form of violence in itself.
The English language is also culpable in Byrd's death because of its culturally based racial bias. If a thing is naturally white, it can be seen to be superficially unsullied. A dark, coloured object can obscure stains. Europeans, specifically the English, have been wont to refer to themselves as white skinned peoples, even outside of and prior to the context of African exploitation. English has developed as a language that associates the 'colour' white with favourable qualities such as innocence, virginity, purity and honesty. Conversely black is conceptualized as symbolic of all that is in opposition to white. When people are conceptualized as being opposite in their innate qualities reason has gone by the wayside; who benefits from this?
The higher up the ladder of racial privilege you travel, the less likely you are to have a 'colour' attributed to your skin's complexion. Light-skinned peoples in conflict are said to have ethnic-differences (i.e. Semites, Croats, and Serbs). The characterizations that go along with the colours that describe race have a significant impact on this dynamic. It is interesting that the English speaking Europeans found Asians to be yellow skinned (cowardly, sickly), Native Americans to be red skinned (hostile, hot-blooded, savage) and Africans to be black skinned (devilish, evil, dishonest /opposite to white i.e. sexual versus virginal, primitive versus Christian).
Two of our Landmarks readings centred on a feminist analysis of the anthropomorphization of animate and inanimate objects (Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm")(Marlatt, "Difference (Em)bracing"). These readings led me to interrogate the words black and white, in light of the visual concepts that they represent and their relationship to the literal definitions of the words black and white. James Byrd Jr.'s murder is only one example of the far-reaching social consequences of pejorative language constructions.
The oldest English language treatises on African - European contacts cite the culturally based negative associations with the 'colour' black, as fundamental to the engendering of discriminatory practices inflicted on African peoples by Europeans (Thomas Jefferson Notes on Virginia; White Man's Burden, Winthrop Jordan). (At this point I acknowledge the various exploitative relationships between Africans all over the continent, clearly there is no comparison to be made between their historical relationships and the actions taken by strangers out of the African context to displace untold millions of people for labour in the colonies). The characterization of African peoples as 'black-skinned' was certainly convenient for the dehumanization of a population needed to labour and mine the resources found in the colonies.
If African people had been characterized as brown skinned, which in reality, we are, this would have been less effective. Brown has earthy, productive, fertile qualities attributed to it and so black was a far more effective choice for the juxtaposition against Europeans who even in pre-African contact times had shown a cultural preference for referring to themselves as white-skinned peoples. White has such virtuous qualities attached to it; clean, pure, innocent and honest, white things seem to beg anthropomorphization.
Genetically, anatomically and socially humans are more similar than we are different. Capitalist forces used language to emphasize and embroider racial differences into this oppositional concept in order to facilitate the rape and exploitation of the colony's resources and people. They tried to structure a society wherein the underclasses have only token mobility and by and large would remain a visibly marked, self-reproducing exploitable labour force.
Here we are, four hundred plus years later, living in a society which takes the ingrained attitude that there is some real sense to be made of the conception of whites and blacks in an oppositional relationship to one another. A relationship in which one group is naturally innocent, neutral and standing on a higher moral ground; unfortunately for our karma as a species, this plan is not only immoral but also unworkable.
English 112
Prof. P.A. Klobucar
March 9, 1999
Copyright, Eva Maximea; UP
© Eva Maximea
When we study English we study words. We ask which words are most effective to communicate our message, and why are they chosen? We choose them to stimulate visual, auditory, emotional and visceral reactions. Before we had racism as we know it today, we had language and we had economics. Language facilitates economics and without language - well, currency is language too, and Africans were reduced to a form of currency in the context of chattel slavery.
The powerful dominant group fights dirty, using tools like racism in order to maintain the status quo. There must be an underclass, disenfranchised and ostracized for capitalism to function, with a small percentage of people controlling the vast majority of the world's property and resources. Once colonialism took root in the colonies, the ideology of 'white' racial superiority became the single most important shackle in the Imperialist coffle.
James Byrd Jr. died to remind us all that nigger is not just a nasty thing to call someone. Nigger is the name of the most powerless, brutally devastated human being we can't even imagine. James Byrd Jr. died on June 7, 1998; the victim of three white males, the first of whom to be convicted is John King. This is a man who proudly bears tattoos depicting "Nazi-type SS lightning bolts...and a large patch of the Confederate Knights of America, a white supremacist group, on the side of his stomach, underlined with 'Aryan Pride', ( www.cnn.com/US/9902/17/dragging.death.03/index.html), 3/1/1999 page 1of 4).
The murder of James Byrd Jr. is euphemistically referred to by media and popular discourse as 'The Dragging Death'. Black rights advocates have insisted on naming this murder a modern day lynching. I include several news stories from CNN, as well as a copy of the affidavit filed by a Jasper police officer. The details of this murder are listed on those pages and while they are very relevant, they tend to exoticize the issue at hand. Jasper County Sheriff Billy Rowles said "[w]e have an isolated incident. Guys who are not our kind of people did some stupid stuff." ( www.cnn.com/US/9806/09/texas.decapitation/index.html).
This is hardly a sensitive analysis, but the point is that while that particular form of violence is relatively isolated as an incident, the attitudes that made it possible are not. In a police affidavit, Shawn Berry one of the accused, is characterized as a reluctant participant in the grisly violence. "When Berry asked King what he was doing, King replied, ' Fixin' to scare the shit out of this nigger '". Berry claims that "King told Berry, 'you're just as guilty as we are. Besides, the same thing could happen to a nigger lover...' ( www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jasper5.html) 3/9/1999 page 5). Herein lies the context of this brutal slaying.
The "Jolly Nigger Toy Savings Bank" Trading Card is depicted in colour at (http://www.tradecards.com/ ). It is described there as "one of the most outrageous examples of nineteenth-century white attitudes toward blacks that you'll see on a trade card". The subject of the site is trading cards; the fact that we are looking at the head of a black man caricatured and objectified as a repository for coins goes without comment. The objectification of black people, especially through the use of dehumanizing, pejorative language is acutely grim at a current website called "Aherne the Nigger Butcher" at (See Reference). The title of the site says it all, but I have attached a copy of the page for those who continue to believe that words such as nigger, live in a sterile vacuum, out of context and without the capacity to incite real harm.
The historical and contemporary usage of pejorative language by the dominant society plays an important part in the perpetuation of racist stereotypes and attitudes. When racism works and exists in business and in our institutions, it is largely silent. When racism arises casually between workers, school children or pedestrians, it is usually first expressed through pejorative language, a form of violence in itself.
The English language is also culpable in Byrd's death because of its culturally based racial bias. If a thing is naturally white, it can be seen to be superficially unsullied. A dark, coloured object can obscure stains. Europeans, specifically the English, have been wont to refer to themselves as white skinned peoples, even outside of and prior to the context of African exploitation. English has developed as a language that associates the 'colour' white with favourable qualities such as innocence, virginity, purity and honesty. Conversely black is conceptualized as symbolic of all that is in opposition to white. When people are conceptualized as being opposite in their innate qualities reason has gone by the wayside; who benefits from this?
The higher up the ladder of racial privilege you travel, the less likely you are to have a 'colour' attributed to your skin's complexion. Light-skinned peoples in conflict are said to have ethnic-differences (i.e. Semites, Croats, and Serbs). The characterizations that go along with the colours that describe race have a significant impact on this dynamic. It is interesting that the English speaking Europeans found Asians to be yellow skinned (cowardly, sickly), Native Americans to be red skinned (hostile, hot-blooded, savage) and Africans to be black skinned (devilish, evil, dishonest /opposite to white i.e. sexual versus virginal, primitive versus Christian).
Two of our Landmarks readings centred on a feminist analysis of the anthropomorphization of animate and inanimate objects (Martin, "The Egg and the Sperm")(Marlatt, "Difference (Em)bracing"). These readings led me to interrogate the words black and white, in light of the visual concepts that they represent and their relationship to the literal definitions of the words black and white. James Byrd Jr.'s murder is only one example of the far-reaching social consequences of pejorative language constructions.
The oldest English language treatises on African - European contacts cite the culturally based negative associations with the 'colour' black, as fundamental to the engendering of discriminatory practices inflicted on African peoples by Europeans (Thomas Jefferson Notes on Virginia; White Man's Burden, Winthrop Jordan). (At this point I acknowledge the various exploitative relationships between Africans all over the continent, clearly there is no comparison to be made between their historical relationships and the actions taken by strangers out of the African context to displace untold millions of people for labour in the colonies). The characterization of African peoples as 'black-skinned' was certainly convenient for the dehumanization of a population needed to labour and mine the resources found in the colonies.
If African people had been characterized as brown skinned, which in reality, we are, this would have been less effective. Brown has earthy, productive, fertile qualities attributed to it and so black was a far more effective choice for the juxtaposition against Europeans who even in pre-African contact times had shown a cultural preference for referring to themselves as white-skinned peoples. White has such virtuous qualities attached to it; clean, pure, innocent and honest, white things seem to beg anthropomorphization.
Genetically, anatomically and socially humans are more similar than we are different. Capitalist forces used language to emphasize and embroider racial differences into this oppositional concept in order to facilitate the rape and exploitation of the colony's resources and people. They tried to structure a society wherein the underclasses have only token mobility and by and large would remain a visibly marked, self-reproducing exploitable labour force.
Here we are, four hundred plus years later, living in a society which takes the ingrained attitude that there is some real sense to be made of the conception of whites and blacks in an oppositional relationship to one another. A relationship in which one group is naturally innocent, neutral and standing on a higher moral ground; unfortunately for our karma as a species, this plan is not only immoral but also unworkable.
English 112
Prof. P.A. Klobucar
March 9, 1999
Copyright, Eva Maximea; UP