Revenge of the Colored People/Night of the Non-White

[oyceter]

I came up with this theory after reading Cherie Priest's Not Flesh Nor Feathers, a mystery set in the South about a flood rising and the evils it uncovers. I've seen/read several examples of stories where an angry person of color (frequently a Black man) goes off on a criminal or killing spree, and it is later revealed that the angsty backstory is.... racism!

In Not Flesh Nor Feathers (spoilers), the eventual evil is... evil Black zombies! Controlled by a dead Black girl who was wronged by her White friend! I have also seen this in Ragtime (the musical), where Coalhouse Walker's car is torched, and he eventually retaliates by holding people hostage and threatening to bomb the city. There is also Orson Scott Card's Heartfire (spoilers), where it is finally revealed that the slaves in his alternate American South do not rebel because another Black man is using voodoo (I think?) to take his fellow Black people's will. Once their heartfires or something are restored, all the resentment bubbles up and they riot and torch the city. There are also multiple instances of Muslim characters of color who are either unfairly treated and end up getting recruited by terrorist organizations in crime dramas (Spooks/MI-5 has several episodes like this), or Muslim terrorists using injustice against Muslim people (usually POC) as an excuse for their attacks.

And of course there are non-fictional equivalents such as the way the Rodney King trial and resulting riots are framed. In Bay Area news, there have been protests gathering over the trial of the police officer who shot (and subsequently killed) a young Black man in the back, and the news reports I saw framed the protesters as almost threatening to riot if justice was not served.

Please feel free to list out more instances of this trope! I am particularly interested if this holds for non-USian countries/narratives.

My off-the-cuff theory is that there is a subconscious knowledge that POC are angry about racism and a subconscious fear that this anger will eventually result in the murder of White people, particularly White people who are not responsible for aforementioned racism. And thus, when POC are angry, it triggers this fear, which also leads to the unjustified thought that White people are unsafe from the Revenge of the Colored People. But the basis of the trope is "OMG these people were oppressed in the past, but not by me, and they are so angry that they turn their rage on undeserving targets, and look, we feel bad they were oppressed, but must they be so scary and angry and mean? See, they turn to violence, which clearly indicates that although they might have sympathetic motives, they go too far!" It is an extreme example of the tone argument or concern trolls, in which White people might actually feel for the injustice of racism if only those annoying brown people weren't so mean about it.

This is, of course, bunk, as a) it plays into the stereotype of angry and violent POC, particularly Black and Muslim POC, b) there is no such thing as being innocent of institutional racism when White privilege is so ingrained in the world, c) the notion that anger inevitably turns to violence and mass murder, and d) the idea that individual acts of violence have the same weight and effect as institutional oppression (I do not condone violence or think it is good, btw, but it is also not the same).

I suspect there are instances of the trope which end up being revenge fantasy, and I also suspect this holds true for other oppressed groups as well. I am also wondering if the flip side of this trope is the Tragic Mulatto narrative or narratives like it, in which POC are tragic and oppressed and conveniently off themselves at the end so White people can feel some guilt and sympathy to assuage their consciences, but not so much that they are actually inconvenienced by it or driven by it to do something about injustice.

(thanks to coffeeandink for the post title and deepad and kate_nepveu and Mely for listening to me spout off on this yesterday)

Comments

[wiliqueen.livejournal.com]

This theory makes a HUGE deal of sense, and I'm frankly surprised (though I probably shouldn't be) not to have seen it described this clearly and explicitly before.

Strictly in the interest of clarity in whatever additional writeup you might end up doing from this: Coalhouse is steadfast about standing up for his rights through the prescribed legal channels well past the point where those channels are utterly failing him. The switch to terrorist tactics is catalyzed by Sarah's death, which is another (escalated) racist injustice right in line with your theory (i.e. "ZOMG [supposedly] hysterical black woman approaching the vice-president DANGER WILL ROBINSON SHOOT HER SHOOT HER!!!").

I'm guessing you actually already knew that, and just phrased it as you did above for the sake of brevity, but am also envisioning people going "But, but, he didn't do it because of the CAR!" (even though that's where it all started) and having that end up as a jumping-off point for derailing/dismissing your point.

Perhaps more helpfully, I can confirm that same chain of events/character arc is present in the novel and in the 1980 film; you can cite them as well as the musical.

(I still feel like I should come up with other examples for this comment to be useful to you, but I'm blanking, and should read the other comments first anyway.)

[kutsuwamushi]

I don't remember the name of this show, but maybe someone else will. I just remember being vaguely horrified that it was showing on PBS.

The hero of the tale goes to India, where there have been mysterious massacres of British soldiers. It is soon discovered that an Indian prince is behind them. He says a few token things about the horrible British. I stopped watching when the the Prince ripped open the (white) damsel in distress's dress to humiliate her in public.

(I think it was an adaptation of an older book series, but ugh. Why.)

[onyxlynx]

In one of those ancient Alfred Hitchcock anthologies (cheap and full of mysteries, some of which I still remember, like Blue Murder and the thing with the "dead" guy who wept and Mr. Campaspe floating out to sea), there was a short story involving a Chinese family, an (English or American) family, and really long-term revenge which I seem to remember because It. Made. No. Sense.

It's projection, you know.

(Sorry. Brain flatly refusing to say more.)

[nightowl]

(Delurking at last to comment.^^ I really liked your words during RaceFail '09 and I subscribed when I read a recent-ish entry you wrote about knowledge and who gets to know what. It resonated with me as I am in science and ideas about knowledge are obviously a constant presence.)

Hm, it has been ages since I read this series, but Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis's Deathgate Cycle had one book (I think it was the 2nd one, Elven Star), where a dwarf character loses his entire tribe (?), becomes really embittered, and when given a chance to help a human and an elf character, secretly plots revenge (when we have access to his thoughts, I recall them being pretty much, "Yes yes, suffer more, humans and elves!" although, IMO, he managed to remain sympathetic instead of "Scary! Must be put down!"). The humans and elves seemed pretty white to me, and they were definitely aristocratic, while the dwarf came across as much less so. I don't know if he was coded POC though, since he IS a dwarf. He winds up "redeeming" himself by dying to save the elf rather than getting killed because he was Out of Control Angry, so I guess it's a combination of this trope and the tragic self-sacrifice one you mentioned at the end. (Again, so many caveats because I last read these 10 years ago.)

Another one that occurred to me that (kind of sort of) fits is, er, Minekura Kazuya's Saiyuki? The youkai are obviously set up as some kind of "racial/ethnic minority" who are unfairly treated by the dominant humans, and they wind up going berserk and killing/eating humans. The comparison to minorities can get a little shaky because the youkai actually DO eat humans (though they can and in many cases, choose not to), whereas cannibalism in POC is just an outright fear-mongering lie. Additionally, I doubt that racism is going to be revealed as the motivations behind the big bads - HOWEVER, the grunt youkai cannon fodder often pull out the, "We are actually so much better than puny humans so JOIN US!" speech, which not only sets up "Us vs. Them," but points to underlying resentment of oppression behind their actions (if not the actions of their bosses).

For some reason it's really hard to come up with concrete examples of this trope even though I know I've seen it everywhere. I keep thinking of What These People Need is a Honky, probably due to the recent spate of movie casting fail that seems to play right into that.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Saiyuki's kind of complicated and ambiguous to try to fit completely into this trope -- Minekura's definitely using the youkai and humans and kami, and despised hanyou or "heretical" kami/youkai hybrids, to explore issues including prejudice and othering and revenge, but she's very cagey about not choosing sides too directly. The youkai have gone berserk due to the machinations of a selfish youkai queen and a renegade human priest who both treat other living beings, youkai and human alike, as nothing but pawns; and we see both humans and youkai who are resentful or vengeful against the other species due to past wrongs -- youkai characters like Banri, Yakumo, Pippi's and her village, etc., all resent or fear humans, but they're also often a little more sympathetic than the human villagers or monasteries that sneer at youkai, or blatantly prejudiced human youkai-slayers like Rikudo or Hazel; and there are sympathetic, honorable antagonists (Gat, the Kou-tachi) on both sides. She has a definite pattern of characters who are consumed by hatred and vengeance dying and/or being literally transformed into monsters (Yakumo, Rikudo, Hazel, Hakkai, Dougan), while characters who can take a step back from their prejudices to see others as individuals rather than prejudging them as members of a group (Seika, You) survive, and the Sanzo-ikkou itself is 3/4 characters who are betwixt and between human and youkai in various ways, and throughout their journey are alternately fighting and aiding both groups. There's a fair bit of "they're horrible, JOIN US!" and "whose side are you on?" coming from both humans and youkai, but the main ethos of the Sanzo-ikkou seems to be in line with Gojyo's "the only side I'm on is my own"...

(But Hazel, I think, would definitely count as an inversion of the "What These People Need Is a Honky" trope! Only white character in the cast, thinks he's crusading to save the world from the evil youkai and is initially welcomed as a saviour by the human villagers, but eventually ends up willingly depowered and shaken by the knowledge that all his life, he's been played and deceived by a more powerful force...)

[nightowl]

Yeah, in short I totally agree with you. I just threw Saiyuki up here because parts of it could fit, but I should've clarified even more than I did. It might qualify better as a subversion? I think she does an interesting job messing around with established fault lines - in particular, the Sanzo-ikkou pretty much judges on a case by case basis rather than siding with one group wholesale. However, they're moving about in a world where, as you've pointed out, everyone wants them to choose sides, that does have an Us vs. Them mentality, and on the surface, it seems like an oppressed peoples go berserk and need to be put down plot. The reality, of course, is two selfish people's machinations and a whole lot of other complications.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought Saiyuki was playing this trope entirely straight without any sort of awareness. It's a better series than that.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nods* I know there are at least a couple of other Saiyuki readers here (waves at Oyce and Rachel and glass-icarus), but I figured it couldn't hurt to expand on things a little for any folks who aren't familiar with the title. (And I must admit, the anime adaptations sometimes make me cringe a little when they go in for giving some of the cannonfodder-filler!youkai-of-the-week gray-green skin...)

[rachelmanija]

Here!

Not that I have anything intelligent to add, except that I too see it as more of a conscious working out and sometimes subversion of related tropes than an example of what Oyce is talking about.

[nightowl]

Saiyuki: More than meets the eye!

[nightowl]

Yeah, definitely, thanks for expanding on things - don't want people to think that Saiyuki fell hook-line-and-sinker to this trope, that would totally give the wrong impression of this series. I'm finding it unreasonably hard to come up with specific examples for this trope, somehow, and I currently cannot stop thinking about friggin' Saiyuki, which probably made me too eager to post about it.^^;

(Ah the anime. I really do not like those adaptations, and I made the mistake of seeing them before ever touching the manga. It had its moments but was mostly kind of terrible - I think watching the anime first almost single-handedly caused me to dismiss the entire series as melodramatic crap. Glad I gave it a second chance years later.^^)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah ha ha, Saiyuki does that to people -- it's been EATING MY BRAIN for the last three years, so I understand the urge to meta about it completely! ^_~

[glass_icarus]

Hee! *waves back* :D I have been failing to catch up on Saiyuki for so long now, omg- bad fangirl, no biscuit.

[glass_icarus]

Dune's already been mentioned, I see, so I will point out Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Avatar, because the more I think on it, the more glaring and WTF that... business... with the Mahrkagir becomes. -.-;;;;;; Also, because I just finished reading it, Madeleine L'Engle's A Severed Wasp, which I am seriously going to have to write a dissection post for, ugh. D: (It's been a while since I've read her, and I'd forgotten- or perhaps not quite realized- how white her writing is.)

[tablesaw]

I feel like these are instructional parables for white people still dealing with the transition from direct to indirect racism. "Hey, fellow white person, it turns out that if you push too hard to keep people in their proper place in society, they can come out the other side of society and start fucking shit up with things like slave rebellions, race riots, Haiti, etc. It also turns out that if we don't do those things, we can still keep most of the nice stuff we got, and nobody can do anything about it. So avoid doing those individual things, and everything will be all white."

[hot_tramp]

I know there have been Law and Order episodes like this. One that comes to mind had a black teen boy shooting some white cops because his older brother's murder had been "mishandled" (i.e. totally botched) by different police officers.

[the_jack]

I know exactly the episode you mean. In general L&O reruns are a nice 42-minutes-of-escapism option for me & (especially) Te, but that ep is one of the ones we just cannot watch over again.

[spiralsheep]

Also, colonial era stories about the poc hordes led by "witchdoctors" attacking white colonials, especially when those colonials are presented as "innocents" (y'know, missionaries &c.)?

[deepad]

OMG I THOUGHT OF ONE!!!

10,000 Leagues Under the Sea! (In association with the reveals in Mysterious Island.

Nemo is an Indian prince turned by colonial ravages into a bitter attacker of British ships.

[jonquil]

OMG yes.

[devohoneybee]

more of the "white guy in exotic land has personal journey and/or saves the day":

A number of Peter Weir movies fit this trope, especially some of his earlier ones, before he moved from Australia to Hollywood. In The Last Wave, Richard Chamberlain (playing a South African, IIRC) encounters a Magical Aborigine who prophecies about a huge tidal wave and his life is turned upside-down. In The Year of Living Dangerously, Mel Gibson is an American in Indonesia. In The Witness, Harrison Ford saves the day in Amish country (an isolated and insular American subculture). While Weir arguably treats these "exotic" cultures with some respect, it's all based on the assumption that the audience "needs" a white, male protagonist as the way into the story. And come to think of it, I do recall protests from the Amish community at the time, that the depiction of sexual interest between the Amish woman and the Harrison character (in which she is allows herself to be seen semi-undressed while washing herself) was disrespectful to their morals.

[oyceter]

I just thought of Urasawa Naoki's Pluto. (Spoilers through vol. 5) Pluto ends up being a man who was created by a Persian scientist for revenge after Persia is devastated in that universe's equivalent to the Gulf War.

This Whole Comment Is Spoilers

[willow]

The Phoenix Trilogy; James Mallory & Mercedes Lackey.

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The nomadic desert dwelling peoples are deceived and mislead (blah blah blah), and end up raining absolute and utter destruction on nearby cities (which contain northern/white folk among others) with which they trade. They slaughter everyone, including children, burn the cities to the ground and poison the wells. The group that goes out killing becomes wild and intoxicated with the power of war and bloodshed, end up beserkers and are used by the 'Northern' protagonists as suicide fighters against the great evil.

The desert peoples are seen as somewhat mysterious and no one quite knows anything about them; not even the places they go in the desert when they're not near the cities.

It may not -quite- fall into 'Revenge of the Coloured People'. But the series does fall into 'Night of the Non White' - as the desert people end up as undead in the series and have to be hacked to pieces as they try to get through their own people; currently crowded around the 'Northern/White (male) protagonists.

It also falls into "Those Feeble Minded PoC" - As they're mislead by a charismatic leader into a warped fanatical fundamentalism of their original spirituality and he in turn was mislead by The Big Evil.

This is a series I read all the way through because 1) Misty (even if she does have a resume of fail on race issues) and 2) I trusted because of how much I liked the first trilogy (The Obsidian Trilogy).

And yet I've never read such an anti West Asian thing in my life. The nomads are helpless victims, ruthless killers, and responsible for their own downfall by relying too much on tradition.

The hurt started sometime in January and I'm still not quite over it yet.

[arachnejericho.myopenid.com]

Quite probably the remake of Red Dawn.

"Hordes of Asian people will totally obey the will of their dictator and invade the land masses ruthlessly because that's how they work" appears practically ingrained in Western society. To the point where dropping nukes on two cities in Japan is considered a good policy decision by many people, rather than one fraught with "the FUCK we were killing innocent people in horrible ways." No, apparently we were killing innocent Asian people, who are totally a different matter, because they can totally turn into mindless zombies, yo.

(And the Japanese internment camps. My gods.)

*bitter*

trigger warning: talk about the kkk

[stoneself]

trigger warning: talk about the kkk


part of the founding myth of the kkk is that freed black slaves went around the south exacting revenge on the white folk, and that the kkk rose up to defend the white folk from the angry black folk.

no few of the stories in "night of non-white folk" family are veiled versions of that myth.

edit: added trigger warning to main body of comment.

Re: trigger warning: talk about the kkk

[jonquil]

See: *Gone With The Wind*.