Did it revert to 1906 when I wasn't looking?

[elspethdixon]

There's a lot of thought provoking meta out there right now vis-a-vis race and fandom.

Then there's statements like this:
The Emmett Till murder shows that race relations were different between Chicago and deep south Mississippi. The fact that Till didn't know to keep his head down and not admire the white women in town shows exactly how different his social awareness was from the local population. [bold emphasis mine]*

No. Just no.

Also, didn't we establish that "Evil black men want to rape white women" as a justification for murdering people was a lie a very long time ago? (Seriously, we discussed it in a graduate history seminar I was enrolled in. People have done studies of white-on-black lynching cases, and found that most of the victims were innocent of the crimes they were accused of, and men accused of raping white women were almost invariably innocent).

* from comment here. I'd recommend not engaging, though I was unable to resist the temptation to do so.

Also, for context wikipedia bio of Emmett Till. He was 14 when he was killed.

Comments

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

It was apparently a social experiment to see houw people would react to inflammatory racist statements ro something, anyway, so responding would just have been feeding the troll (I now feel dumb for replying myself).

[lalouve.livejournal.com]

But of course you couldn't know that. I think those trying to engage in discussion there were brave and generous. That is never a bad thing.