New rule effective immediately: no politician can use the term "lynching" to describe an otherwise routine political impasse. Nor can it be used for low-grade racial conflicts. Between 1880-1910 African Americans were lynched at a rate that averages out to two per week. These were people who were routinely tortured, shot and castrated before being set afire. Being passed over for a job -- even a job you deserve -- just isn't in the same category as recreational murder.Yup, and when Rush threw that "lynching" card out there, he didn't just disgrace himself, he really trivialized, arguably, the most disgraceful eras in American history. Of course he wasn't the first:
First Clarence Thomas, inventor of the portable crucifix, hailed that he was the target of a hi-tech one (the only lynching to culminate in a guarantee of lifelong employment for the victim) and now every black politician who gets questioned on an expenditure smells kerosene in the air. (And this damn sure doesn't give Bill O'Reilly a pass on reckless lynching references either.)
Bobby Rush knows (or at some point knew) better than this which is part of what makes the Roland Burris fiasco so frustrating. If Burris is not seated it will not be tantamount to a lynching. But he and Thomas have a surprising degree of common ground on the lynching issue.
Thomas threw out the L-word hoping to cow white Senate Democrats who were on the fence about his nomination. Seventeen years later Rush is tossing the term around pretty much for the same reason. In America, where cynicism is an art form, there's room for a kind of ironic appreciation for the fact that the most horrific element of black history can now be deployed to gain leverage over white politicians. That is, if it didn't consistently undermine the memory of what lynching actually was.
At the end of the day, cynicism is like using a mirror to look at a mirror -- in the reflection of a reflection of a reflection you eventually lose sight of what the real image is.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
If anyone wants a reminder of what lynching was really about:
http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
My grandpa was chased out of TX by a lynch mob so yeah I was upset when Rush just threw out that word like that.
I can recommend a really good book, particularly for those with an interest in the law: Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism. It's a fascinating story.
This is pretty bad, but I don't think it compares to the rabbi (at my cousin's wedding) that said that Jews marrying outside the faith in the U.S. was "another holocaust."
The Jews win again!
As a child in the 60s, I recall my uncle discussing a lynching forty years earlier that had happened at the local courthouse. I couldn't believe it. At our courthouse? In the middle of downtown? Where the sheriff's office is? And nobody tried to stop it? They stood around and watched?
The era of lynching was one of the most repellant period in America's history. No one, and especially no politician, black or white, should use this term in reference to a mere political debate.
Bobby Rush should know better, but I suspect we'll see more of this old-style talk rather than less. Obama's election has taken some of the sting out of phrases that once made white people feel guilty, but some of the older, civil rights-era black politicians haven't adjusted to this yet.
As so often happens, it is Jon Stewart who zeroed in on the absurdity of the claim that white senators want to keep the black man out. (Paraphrasing) "Notice how they got rid of the previous black senator? They gave him his own separate but equal branch of government to run."
@Jordan: You beat me to it. Call me macabre or whatever, but I actually bought that book and used to display it prominently on my coffee table.
I have a certain amount of disdain for those who invoke the terms "lynching" or "holocaust" or "Nazis" for mere political play. Those sorts of people are not to be taken seriously.
Co-sign. It infuriates me to hear anyone--especially a black man old enough to know better--use that term so cavalierly. I'm tired of people comparing their extreme discomfort and suffering of relatively moderate injustice to brutal abuse and death.
It seems to pretty much parallel Godwin's law when you put it like that. You just can't conversate with a person who abuses language and metaphor.
Comparing anything to lynching stinks of the same tactic as people who say things like "baby seal holocaust" or that public figures are in any way like Hitler. Umm, no.
tom c, you're absolutely right to invoke Godwin's Law here.
I think we need an equivalent term here: might I suggest "Thomas's Law"?
Sorry if this is a little off topic, but all of the Rush craziness of the past few days has really reminded me why I voted against him in 2000.
I'd have to say the difference in that piece is that Thomas did it at a time when the Boomers were solidifying their hold on all facets of American power and bringing all of their emotional baggage right along with them.
Rush doesn't seem to understand that his ilk's era is at an end.
Those who try to appropriate either the Jewish or African American holocaust to further their own personal agendas are usually cynical and always shameless.
Thank you for writing this.
I always had a problem with the Lynching Defense, but the post help me tease out WHY that shit is jacked.
Other great modern source re: Lynching, the graphic novel Incognegro by Mat Johnson. I think that's right up this whole wheel house.
Also, earlier today on Hardball, Bobby Rush told Chris Matthews that seeing Burris turned away from the Senate yesterday reminded him of seeing people sick dogs on children in Birmingham.
I honestly don't know what's happened to Rush. This kind of rhetoric is probably what Rod was hoping for, in that making the Burris nomination about race makes it more likely he'll get through and Rod will have his pyrrhic victory. But this is over the top.
If he really wanted to know about lynching, he could have asked Rolando Cruz.
Burris is a man with poor judgment, and Rush has no conscience whatsoever.
The Black Card-
Never leave home without it!
I really didn't agree with the point of this argument at first– As I reflected on this issue after seeing Rep. Rush's Hardball interview.
I thought:
What if he said nothing?
Maybe from his point of view it felt/looked like is that had no pressure been applied, fairness and equality would not be applied. That is a reality that many in our community, those descendants of the free labor this country received and benefited from, and went unheard for many generations.
But Bobby Rush represents some of the most sophisticated constituencies in the country. This historic seat was the first to send a Black man to Congress post- Reconstruction, and now the First black man to the White House. So it is that richness that I didn't asset, mainly because I was caught up in the sensational aspect of this whole drama.
We are a nation of laws not men! Blago has not even been charged. So he is playing politics, but that is the system and the game. He can still carry out his duties until they prove him guilty.
How come they (the Senate Democrats) just didn’t say that they would review his credentials? Why was it suggested that Obama’s replacement not be an African-American? Why have we decided that the IL governor is guilty before he has been charged?
That withstanding, this was never about them not seating him because he was black!-
Bobby whipped out his Black Card, just so people ‘don't get it twisted’; Obama doesn't end the black communities struggle for equitable access.
He let them know, don’t try it.
It was a warning from the Black community not to pull some last minute, "did you read the fine print' shit that we have been accustom to receiving as African Americans.
And a wake up card to the Black community, we must demand from each other and honesty and fairness. In America you have a right to speak your mind, to be wrong in the public square and right in your home and to debate and bring about a peaceful solution to the difference.
I think there is a lesson for my generation the 'hip-hop generation’ as we begin to ascend to leadership positions. It is about a community holding and defending one of is own. Even if he isn't (the Angry Black Man) like many perceive Rep. Rush
This country is about liberty, and just as many Mcain/Palin supporters express their views, and because 'white' is the main racial group in America, they exercise their views without question.
Bobby can say lynching, hanged, tarred and feathered because we still live with the remnants of that bitter past, and poor legislation since has squandered and misdirected assistance to the working class in the Black community who are beyond thirsty for a drink from the American well.
The 'system' still has most poor people trapped in an economic strangle.
Is that because of white people? NO!
But is because we allowed for years for the inequity to exist. Black/brown coded legislation to become law,
The movement of African-Americans has not been rectified because we now have a Black president. What we hope for is the potential of having someone from the community who has seen first hand how -ignorance and arrogance- has decayed not just black communities, but all of America’s working class. We want his presidency and symbolism to allow us to continue to heal and fix- (through more reflective legislation) an imbalanced system, which has catered to the needs of the rich since good old Ronnie grabbed the helm.
Remember that the Black Card has its privileges. Even its credit has been reduced; only the owner’s can extended a further line of credit to the holders. Bobby has made us aware that we more credit to use and that we must exercise our interest, and demand that this government respond to it citizens needs. No taxation without representation!
I agree with anna perez on this one. As a Jew, I hate how everyone throws up Hitler and the holocaust: it is so trivializing to the memory of those who lived and died through the days of the third reich, not to mention consistently historically innacurate.
Finally, it can be used as a justification for all sorts of nonsense. In Clarence Thomas' case, it was incredibly perverted. Lynching, was often justified by slanders of black men having improper sexual relations with white women, but when Thomas ignorantly pushed his sexual fantasies on a black woman in a government job, he used the term to justify his nomination to the Supreme Court--one of the most remarkable, though typically conservative, bait and switiches in the history of such nominations, and we've been stuck with his nonsensical decisions for decades as a result.
Posted by KarenZ :
"As a child in the 60s, I recall my uncle discussing a lynching forty years earlier that had happened at the local courthouse. I couldn't believe it. At our courthouse? In the middle of downtown? Where the sheriff's office is? And nobody tried to stop it? They stood around and watched?"
Very likely the only reason that the sheriff didn't *help* commit murder is that he figured it might just be a bit too much (and I'm being literal here with 'a bit'), and that he'd better just stand at the back of the crowd and cheer.