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

[spiralsheep]

With German colonialism not at all present in today's citizen's mind

Hmm, no "gypsy" curse equivalents to the indigenous American Indian examples mentioned above? No revenge of the Turks/Muslims? If that's true then it's interesting wrt to the speculations in comments about white guilt cos if Germans rly have buried their Imperialism and racism sooo deep that they don't feel guilt about it then there'd be no subconscious prompt to scary-not-us-people revenge fantasies, perhaps?

[monanotlisa]

if Germans rly have buried their Imperialism and racism sooo deep that they don't feel guilt about it then there'd be no subconscious prompt to scary-not-us-people revenge fantasies, perhaps?

This is exactly what I've been wondering about!

Hmm, no "gypsy" curse equivalents

Not to my knowledge, no. I'm very certainly filtering along my cultural ley lines, but still, I did read 30 books per week as a kid and feel a little stumped.

No revenge of the Turks/Muslims?

As I said, I'm sure this exists - but not as common entertainment, beloved movie, book, or radio show. Perhaps more of that nowadays, with a more diverse society, as a sub- and unconscious backlash?

Writing a blog post as I speak...

[spiralsheep]

Hmm, what about "evil" African/Asian artefact (maybe in/from a museum)? We Brits write TONS of those (our colonial thefts let us show you them!)?

Writing a blog post as I speak...

Shiny! Link me when you post?

[monanotlisa]

Hmm, what about "evil" African/Asian artefact (maybe in/from a museum)?

Actually, that one might work! But doesn't it verge more into general exoticism, which is ubiquitous?

[spiralsheep]

I think there're probably several "evil" artefact tropes. Some which would probably fit under oyceter's theme are:

1) artefact takes revenge for dead brown people,
2) artefact takes revenge for being stolen,
3) brown people's artefact mind-controls white people and turns them "evil", especially if it also makes them intellectually/emotionally/physically "primitive" (like, for example, stupid/vengeful/shambling zombies),
4) artefact releases vengeful brown people ghosts,
5) artefact releases vengeful brown people power in some other way.

For example, I could imagine a ghost/horror story where one of the (stolen) Herero skulls in a university museum....

[monanotlisa]

I see what you mean - that totally fits, you're right.

[spiralsheep]

Although it would help if I could spell the difference between "artefact" and "artifact", heh.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I don't think it ever comes up much on the mainland, because Hawai'i in general barely seems to come up in mainland pop culture outside of TV shows having beach-vacation episodes, but there's an interesting variant on #2 within the islands: it's common folklore that disturbing graves or sacred sites, stealing artifacts, harming animals associated with 'aumakua, living on a spirit trail, etc. can cause ill health or other misfortunes. Unlike the usual "evil cursed POC artifact" mainstream trope, though, these gods and spirits and artifacts aren't generally presented as evil, just powerful and strict and not to be crossed. Even if the victim's trespass was innocently unknowing, the stories emphasize the need to make things right -- returning items taken, sincere prayers for forgiveness, bringing a kahu out to bless the site, and so forth; ignorance and having a good heart alone are no protection from punishment.

[spiralsheep]

Yes! Oddly, I knew this about Polynesian cultures. There's also a strong theme in English folklore that the unquiet dead are usually in search of reparation not evil-doing (although their actions might seem "evil" to the living). I can actually think of several stories where this theme of reparation to poc brings a happy ending for (almost) everyone (does even the movie Night at the Museum where the old white guys are thieves and the Egyptian mummy's artifact is returned to him at the end, albeit by a What this Museum Needs is a Honky type, count as a watered down version of this?) but I think the negative stereotype of that trope, which oyceter asked about, is a consequence of the ideas yeloson expresses in his comment here:

http://oyceter.dreamwidth.org/904960.html?thread=10153216&style=light#cmt10153216

That, in a white guilt situation, many white people refuse to consider the possibility of white reparations to brown people and instead default to a binary racist worldview in which it's Them or Us (to certain values of "Them" and "Us", obv) and the preferred historically tried and tested only solution is for the white people to KILL ALL THE BROWN PEOPLE!! Y'know?

It's the same sort of limited binary thinking exhibited by the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" crowd in cultural appropriation discussions. They can't comprehend, even after it's clearly explained to them, that there are other options such as "try, partly succeed, perhaps fail better, apologise when necessary".

[monanotlisa]

http://monanotlisa.dreamwidth.org/988135.html

[spiralsheep]

Thank you for the link.

[monanotlisa]

(Answering with an icon from the original White Male Explains It All! show: I rock the irony. NOT.)

[spiralsheep]

HA! Which illustrates the point I was going to make about my experiences of watching German tv, and examining people's bookshelves, and realising that a significant percentage of media consumption is either of anglophone origin in translation or even in the original English.

(I have long suspected that many ex-colonial European countries which also consume English/British media work out their colonial pasts vicariously through interacting with the ex-colonial guilt in English/British culture.)

[monanotlisa]

Which illustrates the point I was going to make about my experiences of watching German tv, and examining people's bookshelves, and realising that a significant percentage of media consumption is either of anglophone origin in translation or even in the original English.

Absolutely, it is - and in fact, the discussions of racism in source media that I found in my own language pertained to such Anglo creations (US and UK).

I have long suspected that many ex-colonial European countries which also consume English/British media work out their colonial pasts vicariously through interacting with the ex-colonial guilt in English/British culture.

I'm betting this is entirely true, although again, for Germany, I'm not entirely sure: I'm not negating the colonial past and atrocities, but their memory and prevalence in society, the here-and-now.

My working theory would be that Germans do see patterns of discrimination (to use a somewhat too bland term) in Anglo media and at least partially use them to work out the guilt of National Socialism. While there is no comparing, there's something especially monstrous about the systematic genocide we perpetrated then. Perhaps it's a little easier to focus on nations and national histories different yet similar enough?

[spiralsheep]

::nods understanding::

Yes, a culture most recent experience, especially if it's an overwhelming one, can achieve such prominence in people's minds that narratives which address that experience predominate and older/different narratives seem less urgent/important by comparison (so much so that they're sometimes forgotten altogether).

[monanotlisa]

Entirely true with regard to Germany dealing with National Socialism and, to a - rightfully so - lesser degree with World War II. (Although I've noticed that even in this area of today's fictional media landscape, while not expressing the German experience, Anglo narratives still seem dominant. This is less so in documentaries, nonfiction books, radio shows, and educationally geared kids books, though, so I'm not complaining.)

Still waiting for responses with examples of recent fictional creations of the trope oyceter mentions, though. Maybe we need a bigger boat audience.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

Which illustrates the point I was going to make about my experiences of watching German tv, and examining people's bookshelves, and realising that a significant percentage of media consumption is either of anglophone origin in translation or even in the original English.

Keep in mind that media consumption in Germany after WWII was strongly influenced by the results of WWII. To give you a fannish example, in the 1950s Walter Ernsting was one of the people who translated American science fiction novels for the German publishing houses who sold that kind of literature to the German market. When he tried to get his own first SF novel published, he couldn't! Because none of these German publishing houses would publish anything written by a German. In the end he invented an American sounding pseud (Clark Darlton) and pretended that his original novel was a translation. When he and Karl-Herbert Scheer started writing the Perry Rhodan series in 1961 (as far as I know the longest running SF series in the world), it was marketed as an American series and the hero *is* American. Actually, the hero of Raumpatrouille Orion, the other German SF success, is American too. It's not just that a significant percentage of media consumption is of anglophone origin, German media after WWII often was not about German experiences, fears, hopes, etc. either. Germany practiced decades of living vicariously through the victors and whatever tropes about racism and subconscious fears we have in our entertainment, are the ones commonly found in American and UK media.

[spiralsheep]

Commander Cliff McLane! Obligatory Raumpatrouille Orion fangirling here:

http://spiralsheep.dreamwidth.org/153710.html

(Srsly EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH IT!!1!!)

Ahem, and to address your actual point: I have thoughts about what you said, which is very similar to what monanotlisa said in an earlier comment, but posting my thoughts would merely be me encouraging another viewing of German culture through an anglo lens (mine) so I'm sitting on my hands and listening for now. :-)

[weewarrior]

If that's true then it's interesting wrt to the speculations in comments about white guilt cos if Germans rly have buried their Imperialism and racism sooo deep that they don't feel guilt about it then there'd be no subconscious prompt to scary-not-us-people revenge fantasies, perhaps?

(hi; jumped over from monanotlisa's journal and hope it's not too intrusive if I answer as well)

From what I can tell, German colonial history has indeed been buried quite deeply; to a certain extend likely because German cultural discourse seems quite preoccupied both with recent history and with the National Socialist period. Media that deals with racism mostly concentrates on either the latter, or on more contemporary issues (i.e. discrimination against ethnic minorities). It's possible the revenge idea moved into that, as you suggest, but I think fear of a "cultural hijacking" by Muslims plays a greater role. I'm not too well-versed in contemporary German fiction, though, so I could be way off. These are merely impressions and my own interpretation of same.

Sorry, oyceter, I'm Queen of the Typo People today

[spiralsheep]

Hi! ::waves hello::

That's interesting. To me, the colonial German empire (Kaiserlich Deutsches Reich), especially the Herero and Namaqua genocide, is such an obvious precursor to later National Socialist ideas that it seems odd they're not remembered so well. I do understand that a society's most recent experience, especially if it's an overwhelming one, can achieve such prominence in people's minds that narratives which address that experience predominate and older/different narratives seem less urgent/important by comparison (so much so that they're sometimes forgotten altogether) though.

Also, wrt contemporary ethnic minorities in Europe, I think the comparative numbers of white/brown people mean white Europeans don't have the same level of fear of revenge for racism that USians do (for example). So they might fear individual vengeance more than rioting or a total takeover of society (although I'm guessing that in some countries the fear of Turks/Muslims from the east, which feeds from/into earlier history, would prompt fictional responses in various media).

Re: Sorry, oyceter, I'm Queen of the Typo People today

[weewarrior]

To me, the colonial German empire (Kaiserlich Deutsches Reich), especially the Herero and Namaqua genocide, is such an obvious precursor to later National Socialist ideas that it seems odd they're not remembered so well.

I'm trying to remember if I did much on the colonial expansions of the Wilhelminische Kaiserreich at school or at university (I had advanced history courses and studied history very briefly), but I don't recall it being emphasized very much; I wasn't especially going for late 19th/early 20th century, though, so it could simply be the courses I picked. Ideologically speaking, the whole idea of racial purity, which seems to have been predominant especially in the later stages of imperialism, definitely should have influenced the National Socialists.

(although I'm guessing that in some countries the fear of Turks/Muslims from the east, which feeds from/into earlier history, would prompt fictional responses in various media)

I wish I could answer this with any authority, but I have been rather preoccupied with Anglo-centric literature and films over the last few years (I was an English major, until fairly recently). It's probably high time for me to pay more attention to current German fiction; sorry for being a rather frustrating source.

Re: Sorry, oyceter, I'm Queen of the Typo People today

[spiralsheep]

sorry for being a rather frustrating source.

Not at all. I think it does us all good to be reminded that we're not experts on all aspects of our home cultures. I know I'm not. :-)

[monanotlisa]

I second this.

I think fear of a "cultural hijacking" by Muslims plays a greater role

Undoubtedly a common theme in the media, but is it really prominent and unquestioned in fictional narratives?

I'm not too well-versed in contemporary German fiction, though, so I could be way off.

True for me as well.

[weewarrior]

Undoubtedly a common theme in the media, but is it really prominent and unquestioned in fictional narratives?

Clearly, we'll have to find someone who has more expertise than just nationality. ;)

[monanotlisa]

*ggg*