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:
Sorry, oyceter, I'm Queen of the Typo People today
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 01:35 pm (UTC)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
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 02:44 pm (UTC)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
Sat, Jun. 5th, 2010 04:00 pm (UTC)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. :-)