is the title of this powerful New York Times column by Charles M. Blow. He is reacting in particular to the inflammatory statement by the head of the Baltimore Police Union to the demonstrations in the aftermath of the death of Freddy Gray at the hands of police of the Charm City.
To provide some context, Blow takes us back to an actual lynching of a black man on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, quoting from a newspaper report:
“Sources are conflicting regarding many of the details of the assault on Denston and the subsequent murder of George Armwood, but what is certain is that on the evening of October 18 a mob of a thousand or more people stormed into the Princess Anne jail house and hauled Armwood from his cell down to the street below. Before he was hung from a tree some distance away, Armwood was dragged through the streets, beaten, stabbed, and had one ear hacked off. Armwood’s lifeless body was then paraded through the town, finally ending up near the town’s courthouse, where the mob doused the corpse with gasoline and set it on fire.”
Please keep reading.
Before telling us that Maryland saw 32 actual lynching in the period of 1882-1931, Blow offers another paragraph - which I warn you, may well turn your stomach:
As Baltimore’s Afro-American newspaper reported at the time, in addition to Armwood’s blackened skin, mutilated face and missing ear, his tongue was “clenched between his teeth,” giving “evidence of his great agony before death.” It continued: “There is no adequate description of the mute evidence of gloating on the part of whites who gathered to watch the effect upon our people.”
Along the side of the column is a chart with reported lynchings by state, giving a total, and then percentages between black and white. Blow highlights MD with 93% Black, and also two other states with redent killings of Blacvk men by Whites under the apparent color of law, MO with 57% and FL with 91%. Looking at those numbers might be the first time most people today realize how common lynching was.
This is a powerful column, as is always the case with Blow.
He quotes Billie Holliday's powerful song, "Strange Fruit."
He tells us that actual lynchings often severed the spinal cord, reminding us that Gray's spinal cord was 80% severed.
But of equal importance, Blow reiterates for us how often those on the right bastardize our language by accusing directly or by implication those protesting by calling them lynch mobgs: among his examples are Howard Kurtz, Mike Huckabee, Front Page magazine, Laura Ingraham, and an opinion piece on Daily Caller. He provides links.
And he reminds us of Newt Gingrich offering similar language after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin.
Blow follows this section with one key paragraph:
These “lynch mob” invocations are an incredible misuse of language, in which the lexicon of slaughter, subjugation and suffering are reduced to mere colloquialism, and therefore bleached of the blood in which it was originally written and used against the people who were historically victims of the atrocities.
As I read those words, I thought of the political tactic of the likes of Karl Rove to accuse others of the kinds of actions he himself had done.
Blow talks about the misuse of language in political rhetoric in his next paragraph, using the phrase " ghastly rhetorical overreach" to describe it, and acknowledging (and linking to) an occasion 7 years ago when he was guilty of such misuse.
Perhaps that self disclosure was necessary, because his final paragraph is indeed very pointed:
Nothing that political partisans or protesters have done — nothing! — comes remotely close to the barbarism executed by the lynch mobs that stain this country’s history.
barbarism
stain this country's history
a barbarism and a part of our history that too few of our young people ever encounter in their studies of history.
Yesterday I had occasion in a comment to the front page story by Denise Oliver Velez to quote the words of George Santayana at the beginning of the last Century:
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it
We cannot learn from it if we ignore it.
We will not understand if we misuse language.
Read Blow's column.
Pass it on.
Peace??