Blog entry 1: Lynching As Protection for Southern White Masculinity

Even though I was originally apprehensive in thinking of the claims that I was going to make for this blog entry, I found the evidence for my claim to be strong. It seems wrong to be pointing fingers at white masculinity, but throughout writing this entry I have come to the conclusion that this is just another way in which white masculinity works for its own protection in an attempt to provide a pure image of itself. I found one of the most shocking aspects of reading Crystal N. Feimster’s Southern Horrors to be her argument that black men were not lynched in order to protect southern white women from rape, but rather in order to protect white masculinity and thus maintain white male dominance.

As Feimster describes early on in her book, “in the postwar years southern white men articulated a political discourse that defined rape as a crime committed by black men against white women” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 5). In defining rape in these terms, white men had defined who could be a rapist (a black man) and who could be a victim (a white woman). Additionally, Feimster states in her analysis of a newspaper article, “white men hoped to make” the statement that the “lynching of black men would protect white womanhood and keep blacks in their place” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 77). In constructing black men as rapists, white men used lynching as an excuse for protecting white women while really using lynching as a tool of racial oppression. This makes further sense in consideration to Feimster’s discussion of the beginnings of mob violence, in which she cites “economic competition, not rape” as the cause of lynchings of black men (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 90). Also stating that while white women were reconstructing southern femininity, these same white women held white men “to traditional standards of male chivalry and honor” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 125), Rebecca Latimer Felton criticized chivalry for maintaining white male dominance and female subordination. Feimster states that Felton criticized the notion of chivalry, claiming that it “had done little to protect women during the war and seemed to be doing even less in the post-Reconstruction period,” while also having “shored up white men’s economic and political power while leaving women dependent and vulnerable to a host of abuses ranging from rape to financial ruin” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 62 – 63). Felton’s comments, while pertaining to white women, reveal thoughts that while the lynching of black men was advertised as protection for white women against violence from black men, white women were faced with more violence from white men through the notions of traditional white masculinity. In continuing to point its finger at black men, white masculinity was also able to cover its abuses of white women, black women, and black men through myths regarding rape and violence.

Just as white men’s statement of who can be a rapist and who can be a victim, white men were also defining who could not be a rapist and who could not be a victim of rape. Thus, while Feimster uses Ida B. Wells’ Southern Horrors in pointing out that black women were often victims of rape committed by white men (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 91 – 92), this definition excludes black women’s experience of rape by white men, discrediting and silencing black women. Additionally, negative stereotypes regarding black women were created in order to place the blame of white masculine transgressions on black women instead of holding white men accountable. Giving up the idea of a kind, nurturing Mammy in favor of a seductive Jezebel, “southern whites began portraying free black women as savage criminal beasts during reconstruction….Negative images of black womanhood functioned to justify…violence (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 160). Instead of placing the blame for white male violence with white males, white masculinity held black women responsible because of the perceived delinquent characteristics it assigned to them. In defining who is the rapist and who can be raped and thus silencing survivors and misplacing accountability, southern white men have further protected their masculinity. In the tactics of excluding themselves from the social definition of who can be a rapist and silencing their victims by placing responsibility with them through negative stereotypes, the traditional notions of white masculinity are upheld.

With these thoughts in mind, I began to wonder that even though southern white masculinity had used both southern white women and black women as protection, why it was that Felton and the white women involved in the anti-rape movement were able to make these claims while Ida Wells-Barnett and the black women involved with the anti-lynching movement could not? Why could white women speak out against the shortcomings of white masculinity but black women could not? To me, it seems that southern white women still had their white privilege and the protection that came with it. Throughout white masculinity’s definition of rape and the subsequent acts of lynching black men for supposed rapes of white women, white masculinity defined that white women were worth protecting while black women were not. Feimster also hints at an answer to this question, stating that “while the rape of black women by white men still represented an assertion of white men’s racial and sexual power, in the postwar context it served also as both a punishment and threat to black women’s bodily rights as citizens” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 52). Additionally, Feimster states “even though black women could not rape white women, their lynchings were often portrayed as a means of protecting white womanhood” (Feimster, Southern Horrors, 161). Southern white masculinity did not define black women as worthy of protection, but rather as an additional means to protect white women, and thus did not permit them space and voice in publicly sharing and critiquing their experiences.