흑인에 대한 스펙터클 린치와 백인성

Spectacle Lynching on Blacks and Whiteness

Spectacle lynching evolved from private execution to public torture and burning of blacks in the South and came to the climax in the 1890s until it decreased sharply in the 1930s. White mobs made a social ritual of castration and mutilation of black bodies before burning them at the stake, calling it ‘Nigger barbecue’. Thousands of people gathered and cheered the event collecting souvenirs of body parts. These lynch carnivals were unprecedented and uncomparable to other racial violence and permitted by connivance and abettal of local criminal justice system and judicial power. Not only states and counties but also federal government and supreme court failed to stop this horrible crime in the cause of constitutional state’s power over federal intervention. The most shocking scene in the racial terror history of America continued for decades while Southern whites were branding stigma and exclusion on blacks and strengthening superior status of whiteness. Indeed, it was the participation of people who joined and enjoyed racial torture and killing to make spectacle lynching as American Holocaust. Its legacy still haunts American people with continuation of racial conflict and the abuses of policing power.