Take a good look at the photo above.
Husbands, fathers, wives, mothers: entire families dressed in their Sunday best. Note the absence of anger on their faces: there’s no hatred, no vitriol; some of the children are smiling.
This is just business as usual. These events were announced at churches like a carnival: tickets were sold, picnics were planned, food vendors came and peddled their wares. This was an American pastime: baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and lynching.
It takes a particular kind of disconnect from your humanity to torture and kill a human being for entertainment. A deeper look proves even more unsettling. The abject horror is the image above is distracting enough to prevent one from asking far more uncomfortable questions. To unpack this, we have to move beyond the public spectacle into something more intimate, more deeply disturbing:
Someone thought it was a good idea to commemorate torture and murder by sending a postcard.
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The United States Postal Service can trace its roots all the way back to Ben Franklin and the Second Constitutional Congress. The practice of sending postcards gained popularity in the late 1800s, as postal service spread across the frontier. In the early 1900s, Kodak made the (relatively) new technology of photography available to the masses. As railroads began to crisscross the nation, postcards became (and remain) a simple way of sending forget-me-notes; a cost effective form of saying “having fun, wish you were here” to faraway friends.
Forget for a moment the atrocity this postcard documented. Forget the participants, forget the spectators: what does this postcard say about the sender? What does it say about the receiver?
No one wants to think of themselves—or their friends and family—as bad people. People want to believe they’re good people. When something enters their psyche that might contradict this assurance, it is easier psychologically to construct a reality that suits your belief system, than to reexamine your beliefs. Good people own homes and businesses. They go to church and pay their taxes and coach little league. They have bake sales and donate blood and kiss their mothers. They say please and thank you.
All of this is nice. None of it is good.
The word nice first appears in the English language around the end of the 13th century, when it was used to describe a dullard. Taken from the Latin “nescius” the literal translation for nice is “not knowing” or ignorant. Eventually nice diffused into the modern meaning of “something mildly agreeable.”
Niceness isn’t goodness. Politeness isn’t goodness. If goodness has a litmus test, it is the response to oppression. It is not enough to simply not actively participate in acts of oppression: you cannot tolerate, sympathize, or condone oppression, and be a good person. In the words of Desmond Tutu:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
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Entrenched systems of oppression require complicity. “We must take sides” said Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor. “Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
We may never know about the sender and receiver of this postcard—whether they approved, were amused, repulsed, ambivalent, or just indifferent. We do know this: to choose non-action because you are personally unaffected by oppression is to give tacit support.
You cannot be neutral to oppression and be a good person. The two are irreconcilable.
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Photo: Wikipedia Commons
One of the many key methods of institutionalized racism, bigotry and oppression. Religion and civic authorities worked in harmony to maintain this subculture of inhumanity and heartless cruelty. This subculture made their people treat every other race like domesticated animals. It maintained their economics through fear and terrorism of Africans.
Hi Jackie I don’t know who you are. I have just joined the Good Men Project – with my small bit Do Men Need To ‘Man Up’? – and I salute first of all your courage in putting this evidence out there of the cruelty shown to one human being by countless others. I also salute the great people at GMP who have put this tough evidence out there. I’ve tried to read the card but it seems to say “This is where they lynched a negro the other day. We don’t know who, but I guess they don’t care”.… Read more »
True enoiugh, as the “good Christian men/women” in not just America’s Deep South or even apartheid era South Africa but Nazi Germany would find out!
Two points. Many in the social justice community when asked why they haven’t opposed this or championed that have replied that their resources are finite and they have to choose the battles they fight. Are they wrong? Are they complicit in the other oppression which they have chosen not to addressed. The other point is an issue I have with the post. You mention oppression and systems of oppression rather than injustice or wrongs. I suspect that’s double speak for I’m going to categorize every injustice I care about as oppression or a system of oppression and the ones I… Read more »
Many in the social justice community when asked why they haven’t opposed this or championed that have replied that their resources are finite and they have to choose the battles they fight. Are they wrong? Are they complicit in the other oppression which they have chosen not to addressed. And mind you people in the social justice community will say reply that their resources are finite while at the same time dictating to others what they should be championing or opposing. The other point is an issue I have with the post. You mention oppression and systems of oppression rather… Read more »
@ Danny “And mind you people in the social justice community will say reply that their resources are finite while at the same time dictating to others what they should be championing or opposing.” They’ll often say it’s not a zero sum game in some instances and in others claim that addressing the issues faced by another section of society removes the spotlight on the section that really needs it. Two people facing the exact same thing. One is oppressed and the other has bad luck. “This feeds back to your first point I think. If you control the language… Read more »
They’ll often say it’s not a zero sum game in some instances and in others claim that addressing the issues faced by another section of society removes the spotlight on the section that really needs it. Two people facing the exact same thing. One is oppressed and the other has bad luck. Yep. Just look at how male and female rape victims are treated. The first rule of debate is whoever can frame the debate will most likely win it.I’ve always pushed for re-examining metrics and even definitions. And I’ll bet that makes discussions hard for you because people will… Read more »
So you’re outraged at the injustice? Had you been there you would have stood up to it? Think about the time you got the hell kicked out of you when you did stand up for something. Oh, that didn’t happen, but you would have–you’re sure? I suggest then that you pick your fights too carefully, and that most of us would have been smiling and eating fried chicken.
Don’t dare look down on the oppressions of the past until you’ve proven what you stand for today.