The Ashley Todd Hoax Is America's Hoax

[Joanne98]

From the very beginning, there were consistencies and inconsistencies in Ashley Todd's narrative about the alleged attack she suffered. The inconsistencies were within the story itself (the reverse "B" most obviously). The consistencies were with a long, long history of lies about blacks that are inescapably linked with racism in all its forms, from slavery, through segregation, through the "colorblind" racism of the present day. Both leaped out at me as the story exploded. Among the consistencies were the 4,742 identified lynchings from 1882 to 1964, for which the breakdown of "causes" reads:

"Cause" Number Percent
Homicides 1,937 40.84
Felonious Assault 205 4.32
Rape 912 19.22
Attempted Rape 288 6.07
Robbery and Theft 232 4.89
Insult to White Person 85 1.79
All Other Causes 1,084 22.85
Total 4,743 100.00

Speaking of "Insult to White Person," although not strictly a "lynching" per se, I thought as well about Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy murdered for whistling at a white woman. You see, the history of lynching is a history of terrorism, a history of collective punishment and mass intimidation. One black does something, however trivial-or is alleged to-and some black, any black, must pay, without all that "due process" stuff that's reserved for white people.

This, quite naturally, puts the entire black community at risk. Which is, of course, the underlying point. A point that's very much alive today, as revealed in a blog post from Fox Executive Vice President Joe Moody, titled, with unintended irony, "Moment of Truth":

If Ms. Todd's allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Senator Obama, not because they are racists (with due respect to Rep. John Murtha), but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.
At DKos, Meteor Blades asks:

Revisit their support for Obama not because they are racists? Why then? What exactly is it, Joe, that connects a blackety-black man who attacks a white female McCain volunteer with support or lack of it for the Senator?

It's not just racism is a generic sense, but the specific tradition of racial terrorism that's being invoked here. Any black at any time can be singled out for any reason, even if he's on the verge of being elected President of the United States.

Paul Rosenberg :: The Ashley Todd Hoax Is America's Hoax
Racism? Only someone who's a racist would see racism in that! That's part of the core formulation of contemporary "colorblind racism" (see Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva).
Here's a vivid example from just last week:

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.
The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

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Continued>>>
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=6D04820BCE98C56810FE21CDD59155A7?diaryId=9382

[Jackpine Radical]

1. What Moody meant to say is that lots of whites will reconsider their support for Obama--

not out of racism, but because electing him might be equivalent to putting a lot of those scary blacks in power; you know--all those angry dark people who have been harboring and building their grudges because they were denied the fruits of their own labor, because many were lynched with little provocation, because of slavery, because of being experimented on like lab animals, because they go to prison at a rate 10x that of whites--and because maybe they aren't really willing to just get over it. It really is a white guilt thing, only it's the repressed guilt of those who aren't ready to admit what they did for generations, and many are still doing.

Tough nuts, Joe.

[struggle4progress]

2. The murder of Emmett Till wasn't a lynching? Since when?

Lynching is simply extrajudicial execution by a group, whether it involves hanging, burning the victim alive, or beating the person to death