Protectionism at Its Worst
In Three Acts

Act one. Between 1882 and 1951, 4730 people are lynched in the U.S. Of those, 3437 are black. Lynching continues through the 1950s and 1960s as civil rights workers test the powers that be on legal and extralegal discrimination. The rationale, if we can even use that word, behind lynching is allegedly the protection of white women's virtue. Whether they wanted it or not, the rumor of a consensual relationship between a white woman and a black man, legitimate sexual violence, or, in the case of Emmett Till, verbally assaulting a white woman with a wolf whistle were all grounds for hanging a black man from the nearest tree. Strange fruit, indeed. Black women were lynched, too, but black men were disproportionately victims of vigilante violence under the guise of protecting white women's virtue.

Act two. February 4, 1999. Four New York City cops respond to an alleged call about a man who looks like a suspected serial rapist in the neighborhood. Their sudden concern for intra-community sexual assault was admirable. Instead, they happened upon 22-year-old Amadou Diallo. An immigrant from Guinea, Diallo is murdered by 19 of 41 bullets fired at him as he attempted to retrieve his wallet. News reports chime in hereafter, "An unarmed black man…" as if to say that all black men are armed, but in this particular case of police murder, he wasn't. Oops. Their bad. United We Stand.

Act three. November 17, 2001. First Lady of the President-Select Laura Bush delivers a radio address to the nation standing against the brutality faced by women in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. How very delightful that someone on her staff saw fit to finally mention what the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA; http://rawa.fancymarketing.net/) have been organizing against for since 1977. The total stifling of Afghan women's civil liberties, and feminist struggles against it, were under way long before September 11th ---most definitely before the White House took time out from actively ignoring Anthrax threats against women's health care providers and imposing a global gag rule blocking international health care providers from informing women about all of their reproductive options.

Rustle up the menfolk for a lynching, while maintaining for decades that sexual assault within marriage or white men raping black women is acceptable. What better way to get New York's black community to understand police aggression against a man with a wallet in his own doorway than to claim they thought he was a rape suspect? Surely, black men (who need to be down with their patriarchal program by protecting "their" women) will overlook this latest slight? The tiny despot Bush's approval rating among women had already started to improve over the course of the year. I can only imagine what L.B.'s address did for that rating among conservatives and neo-liberals.

Please excuse my sarcasm--- for these are all very serious matters---but like I said: I hate to be used. In each instance, white supremacist patriarchal systems find a way to hide behind the petticoats, FUBU jeans, or burqas of women. Rather than proactively seeking real and lasting social justice that will improve the lives of women and children, we are used when it is convenient to advance a cause. In the end, we need to rethink the ways that protectionism comes back again and again. Rather than empower women to change their life situation and the world, protectionism transforms itself into ideals of "ensuring democracy" or "quality of life initiatives" or "enhanced policing."

© Kimberly Springer, 2002
All Rights Reserved

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