Hi Wilma, thanks for your thoughtful response.
I don't want to quibble about the first point because I'm sure we (along with every human being with a soul), are in agreement about how awful these pictures are. But having looked through as many as I could stomach, they're not as you described. There are no children, they're not pillars of their communities, and I'd gladly take that wager that these people knew many black people or acted the least bit friendly towards them. I’m aware that lynching didn’t end hundreds of years ago (James Anderson was lynched in 2011!) . Also, the picture you linked was taken in 1930, so though not a hundred years ago, it was ninety years ago which is close enough to make my point.
These people came to watch a lynching. They're having what looks like a party whilst two black human beings hang from a tree. Do you seriously believe that these people share the same values as the vast majority of white people alive today? Most people today couldn't bear to be near a dead body of any colour and would find lynching for any reason at all abhorrent. We also don't kill homosexuals, we recognise that inter-marital rape is possible, and don't see doctors recommending cigarettes on TV. As I said, America is a vastly different place now. Society has changed. And it's changed a lot in a relatively short amount of time.
Is there still a way to go? Yes of course, your house analogy is a good one. There are lots of problems that have been painted over or swept under rug, and to put the house in order, those problems need to be laid bare and fixed. But that work is being done. The house is already in better condition than it was fifty years ago. To ignore this, to pretend that nothing has changed, or to continually refer to the state the house was in a hundred years ago, is a disservice to the hard, difficult work that many people, black and white, have done to repair it.
But it’s your last point which I find the most difficult to understand. Who is “claiming” themselves as white? Or black for that matter. Being white is a fact of biology which white people have no choice in. To say that being white is anti-black is as senseless as saying that being tall is anti-short or being brunette is anti-blond. Speaking as a man, being tall certainly offers me advantages vs if I were short. There are numerous studies which show that tall men do better romantically, they’re treated with more respect in general, they tend to advance more quickly in their careers.
What does any of this say about my attitude to short men? In a very real sense, tall men have “power” that short men do not. There are many other metrics like sexuality, attractiveness, body shape, able-bodiedness etc. across which the same kind of lines could be drawn. The vast majority of people are just trying to live their lives, and they are treated differently for a variety of reasons like the ones I mentioned. Is this fair? No. Absolutely not. But you add a layer of malicious intent which I can’t see any justification for.
One thing I’m sure we agree on, is that these imbalances aren’t right. But I think your focus on blaming white people in general for the instances where white people are advantaged is way off base. Furthermore, as we’re discussing the original article, I can only imagine how horrifying the world must feel for you if you seriously believe that “all white people are white supremacists” or that even though they might be polite to you in public they “all want to kill you”. I wrote my comment because I wasnted to reassure the author that she doesn’t need to live in this kind of fear.
Yes there are problems, yes we should be working to solve them, but how do you solve a problem if you believe that everybody you’re talking to is waiting for the opportunity to murder you? This is fear overruling your senses. It’s fear allowing you to judge an entire group of people, on nothing more than an irrelevant physical characteristic, and to judge them as inhuman. Although the consequences might be different, this is what the people in the photo you linked are guilty of.
Sorry this is so long, just wanted to address all of your points.
