Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Ahmaud Arbery was the victim. But for weeks, he was painted as a brute and a thug in the trial of the three White men who killed him. This tactic isn't new, but rather the latest example in a long history of court cases that criminalize and dehumanize Black victims.
Race and racial tensions were clearly on display inside and outside the Georgia courtroom where the three men were tried, even as both the defense and the prosecution shied away from those discussions. Instead, the jury heard from the defense a number of racist dog whistles.
"What I saw was the defense preying on White fears," said Carol Anderson, a historian and the chair of African American studies at Emory University. "The 'long, dirty toenails' -- that is an old trope of the 'Black Beast.' That is the stuff coming out of Reconstruction and Jim Crow."
Here's why the heart-wrenching trial was a textbook example of the criminalization and dehumanization of Black male victims:
Angie Maxwell, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas and the co-author of the 2019 book "The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics," said that she believes that the defense was trying to put Arbery "in a (specific) category of Black person."
The toenails comment attempted to signal to jurors that Arbery was "one of 'those' Black people who isn't someone you would admire or respect," Maxwell said, someone "you can't trust, and who doesn't take care of himself."
Anderson, the historian, said that people of many races and ethnicities look at houses under construction, and their behavior is seen as standard or normal.
"But for a Black person to do that, somehow that's criminal. So you have the criminalization of Blackness coursing through this thing," Anderson said.
The McMicheals' decision to chase Arbery was rooted in the idea that Black people are criminals, Anderson said.
"This was like the slave patrol that felt that it had the right to question Black people, to police the movements of Black people, to challenge Black people wherever they were," Anderson said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/25/us/ahmaud-arbery-racist-rhetoric-trial-takeaways/index.html
Race and racial tensions were clearly on display inside and outside the Georgia courtroom where the three men were tried, even as both the defense and the prosecution shied away from those discussions. Instead, the jury heard from the defense a number of racist dog whistles.
"What I saw was the defense preying on White fears," said Carol Anderson, a historian and the chair of African American studies at Emory University. "The 'long, dirty toenails' -- that is an old trope of the 'Black Beast.' That is the stuff coming out of Reconstruction and Jim Crow."
Here's why the heart-wrenching trial was a textbook example of the criminalization and dehumanization of Black male victims:
Angie Maxwell, a political scientist at the University of Arkansas and the co-author of the 2019 book "The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics," said that she believes that the defense was trying to put Arbery "in a (specific) category of Black person."
The toenails comment attempted to signal to jurors that Arbery was "one of 'those' Black people who isn't someone you would admire or respect," Maxwell said, someone "you can't trust, and who doesn't take care of himself."
Anderson, the historian, said that people of many races and ethnicities look at houses under construction, and their behavior is seen as standard or normal.
"But for a Black person to do that, somehow that's criminal. So you have the criminalization of Blackness coursing through this thing," Anderson said.
The McMicheals' decision to chase Arbery was rooted in the idea that Black people are criminals, Anderson said.
"This was like the slave patrol that felt that it had the right to question Black people, to police the movements of Black people, to challenge Black people wherever they were," Anderson said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/25/us/ahmaud-arbery-racist-rhetoric-trial-takeaways/index.html
