What A Lynch Mob Looks Like

While reading a deeply disturbing piece about the historical use of lynching photographs by Dora Apel entitled Lynching Photographs and the Politics of Public Shaming, I couldn't help but be constantly reminded of the displays of race-driven anger and fear at McCain/Palin rallies over the last week. I know this has been pointed out before, but the structures of the two situations truly do mirror one another – not only in the symbolism of words and actions, and in the mediums (photographs and video) used to describe them, but in the reactions of those not involved.

As Apel describes it, the psychology behind lynching was driven by the perception of a shifting or unstable power relationship between whites and blacks. This is also the case now, as we are poised to cross arguably the largest symbolic barrier to black power in the United States, in the face of a decently-sized racist reaction. While the sexual dimension is not as explicit as it was a hundred years ago, the overtones of fear about white women's purity in the face of supposed aggression from black men (sexual or just-not-quite physical) are undeniable. Apel describes a typical fantasy on the bottom of page 57: "In the scenario of a white woman terrified at the sight of a young black man at her door asking for food, the hysteria of the white woman is the implicit counterpart to the danger of the hypersexed black male. Both are "excessively saturated with sexuality," to borrow a phrase from the film theorist Linda Williams. The very condition of the black male's proximity to the white woman became an assault, not on her person but on her senses, causing irresistible feelings of panic, frenzy and fear, which she presumably would not have felt had he been a white male stranger. Thus the position of the white male as protector and defender of the helpless white woman is legitimized."

It is therefore telling that Sarah Palin, not John McCain, first introduced Obama's "dangerous" ties to Bill Ayers, and that the most egregiously racist moment – the verbal and physical attacks on black members of the press and stage crew – took place during a speech of hers. As noted, the situation is not as sexually charged as the scenario Apel describes, but given that it's 21st century national politics, it's not far off. Both Palin and Obama are as close to sex symbols as politicians who aren't Kennedy get, after all.

Even the slogan "Who is Barack Obama?", written so as to allow the listener's worst imaginings to fill in the answer, taps into the archetypal unknown and "dangerous" black man, as in the scene that Apel describes, quoted above. And again, it's worth pointing out that the narrator's voice in the ad is female and worried, and is followed by a shot of McCain's stern countenance and assurance that he approved the message.

After reading about the apparent strength of the lynching ritual in not-as-distant-as-we-would-like American history, it's clear that this sort of thing, and the fact that it works on a certain demographic, should come as no surprise even to people of my (younger) generation. But the points Apel makes about the power of shame caused by lynching photographs are equally well taken, and help to explain why race-driven attacks and displays of frenzied communal anger have thus far only solidified Obama's lead. As the public is exposed to a number of videos of open bigotry and proud misinformation, the shame about that piece of national heritage, based on cultural memories of lynching and personal memories of lynching photographs and descriptions, is explicitly on most peoples' minds. And as Apel notes, the photographs didn't capture the frenzy of the mob's moment. But the video does. In a way, this is one of the first times that the country as a whole has been exposed to the sound and movement, the emotions, of a lynch mob.

And it's really fucking scary.