Retributive racial violence functioned to reassure whites of racial dominance

Evidence

As I reflect on it now, the word that comes to me to describe my great-uncle’s disposition as he told the story is satisfaction. While he never spelled out its full meaning, the story seemed designed to convey a reassurance about our place in the social pecking order—that even if accidental, the death of a white man would demand retribution. When a white man was killed, in other words, the universe lurched sideways. Retaliatory racial violence promised to balance the scales, reinscribing white dominance particularly through its arbitrariness. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 633

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Articulates how even private family storytelling was freighted with white supremacist meaning — the ‘satisfaction’ in passing down a lynching revenge story is a researched observation about how white supremacy lived in ordinary white self-conception.
• XREF: connects to: Racial proximity that symbolized affection was a lynching catalyst for black men — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 603; Macon closed public pools rather than desegregate them — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 586; Meaningful reckoning requires whites to confront their own violent history. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White…, 451 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Violence against racial others functions to convince perpetrators of their own superiority #corroborates (0.92) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 144
• Dominant-race domination is sustained by threat invested in the subjugated #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1504
• Post-Reconstruction lynching reasserted naturalist racial violence against legalist racial order. #expands (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, The Racial State, 80
• White identification with the Negro springs from projected fear of retaliation #complicates (0.72)