Revenge of the Colored People/Night of the Non-White
Fri, Jun. 4th, 2010 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI 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 tocoffeeandink for the post title and deepad and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kate_nepveu and Mely for listening to me spout off on this yesterday)
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)Tags:
They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 05:31 am (UTC)She saw something that had once been a white policeman; she saw a bag lady murder a child her age, only to have her own throat cut by a weeping priest; she saw a white woman in full dominatrix gear running from a pack of black boys, trying to clear her path with her whip.
Just... WTF??? Is this supposed to be horrifying, or is this supposed to be a Jack C. Chalker sex fantasy?
"Shit, Michael," the spokesman protested feebly, "we measured this right from the jump. A shade with a sister, in this hood—he was askin'. I mean shit, the raise seen it an' just drove on by. They was hip, it's a righteous rip."
The man called Michael looked even sadder. "You measure better than me, brother? Lickety-Split, that's your name, right? You saying you measure better than me, right out here on the street, Lickety-Split?"
Many people were watching. Lickety-Split went one shade lighter in complexion, and his three companions flinched away from him. "Hey, Michael, listen," he said urgently, "I ain't dissin' you. I know who the egg man be. I know who the lily o' the valley. Don't be hangin' no sign on me."
This may not come through in this particular excerpt, but what cracks me up in what I've read so far is the palpable sense that Robinson thought he was being anti-racist AND grittily realistic while writing this drivel. Spider Robinson, meet the pavement of the road to Hell.
Re: They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 06:04 am (UTC)Re: They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 03:09 pm (UTC)(flocked; Robinson's wife has just died of a nastily lingering form of cancer.)
Re: They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sun, Jun. 6th, 2010 11:09 pm (UTC)I have read the entire book, I'm afraid. Having done so caused me to have a very strange experience while reading Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence, in that the Womack is a brilliant novel and I kept sitting there going 'it's the bizarro-world realistic and amazing version of that godawful Spider Robinson!', which, it actually is, and I recommend it. But it was so weird sitting there thinking that.
Re: They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sun, Jun. 6th, 2010 11:15 pm (UTC)Re: They was hip, it's a righteous rip
Sun, Jun. 6th, 2010 11:39 pm (UTC)