Less than 24 hours after an apparent white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers in cold blood during a prayer meeting in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, one prominent MRA is trying to put the blame on feminism, because of a remark the killer reportedly made about rape.
One of the survivors of the church killings reported that, before he began shooting, the killer told those in the prayer group that “you rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Dylann Storm Roof, the accused killer, wore his racism on his sleeve, almost literally: a former classmate tells the press that Roof “made a lot of racist jokes”; his license plate featured the Confederate flag; his Facebook profile picture shows him in a jacket with patches representing the flags of Rhodesia and apartheid-era South Africa.
But Dean Esmay, the second-in-command at A Voice for Men, probably the most influential Men’s Rights site, thinks that Roof’s killing spree may be the result of too much feminism. Earlier today, he posted a link to an article on the shooting to the Men’s Rights subreddit with this headline:
To their credit, the Men’s Rights subreddit regulars voted his comment down; one told him “[n]ot everything is about us, man. This is distasteful.”
Two hours later, apparently undaunted by the criticism and oblivious to irony, Esmay returned to the Men’s Rights subreddit to make another accusation:
No one has declared the shooter to be an MRA. The little we know about Roof right now suggests that he was a garden-variety old-school racist. The paranoid notion of black men raping “our” white women is one of the oldest racist tropes out there; as Jessica Valenti noted on Twitter, Roof’s language is “the language of white supremacist patriarchy.”
The alleged threat to “our women” was used for generations as an excuse to lynch black men and terrorize the black community as a whole. In the case of Roof’s shootings, it’s an even more transparent ruse. As Rebecca Carroll notes in The Guardian, it’s hard to argue that these killings had anything to do with real fears or even paranoid fantasies about the rape of white women when most of the victims were not black men — the symbolic “rapists” in the equation — but black women:
There is something inconsistent with the Charleston shooter’s alleged evocation of the historical myth of black man as beast and rapist of white women, and the fact that he killed mostly black women. Did he only shoot black women because there were no more black men to kill? Because black women birth, care for and love black men? Or because he didn’t see black women as women at all …
The idea that white women’s bodies represent that which is inviolable while black women’s are disposable hasn’t changed enough since it was first articulated by white men; but again, aimed at black men on Wednesday night, it was predominately black women who suffered by their invocation.
We will find out more about Root’s twisted beliefs in days to come. But it is clear already that they had nothing whatsoever to do with feminism.
H/T — r/againstmensrights
EDIT: I’m making this a NO TROLL, no-derailing-with-idiotic-MRA-or-incel-talking-points thread.
@SFHC
That goes to either Scar or Ursala, in my book. Shadow Man has the best choreography, though.
…
I just realized that Shadow Man is both Scar AND Ursula for a whole slew of reasons.
….seriously pissed, wishing I could personally send each person who denied segregation to Chicago to see it for themselves. WTF.
@KL
Is Chicago more segregated St Louis? Baltimore? Los Angeles? Cincinnati? Philadelphia? Boston? Cleveland? Miami? Milwaukee? New York City?
No, it’s not. I’ve lived in several of those cities myself, including the South Side of Chicago.
Are all the small towns that remained historically all white because they were “sundown towns” that made it clear to everyone that any black found in the town after sundown would be murdered not segregated? Google “sundown towns”, they weren’t just in the South.
After Reconstruction, after the Federal government gave up on protecting the newly given constitutional rights given to freed blacks, a system of racial apartheid and legally sanctioned terrorism was used to both oppress black people and drive them from the South in order to lower overall amount of black population that in places out numbered whites.
Millions of black people left in the Great Migration and the rest of the country treated the new arrivals like shit. The United States has historically been built on the idea of White Supremacy and the effects are felt everywhere.
Sundown towns are not, themselves, segregated, because to have segregation you have to have at least two racial groups. They contribute to regional segregation, and there is almost nothing positive to say about them, but one can’t apply the word “segregated” to them without redefining segregation.
Segregation is measured by calculating what percentage of a region’s population would need to move in order to achieve complete integration. “Complete integration” means that each neighborhood exactly reflects regional racial percentages, so if 20% of a city is black, each neighborhood would be exactly 20% black in an environment of complete integration. Segregation is measured by what percentage of the population would need to move to achieve complete integration, and therefore a sundown town (or any town that is 100% white) already shows complete integration.
It’s not like these towns are awesome or anything, just that segregation is not a way to measure their awfulness.
@brooked – uhm, people saying Chicago is NOT segregated is my problem. Nowhere did I ever say other places are not segregated. I specifically used the words maybe and probably. You lived on the South Side briefly? Applause applause. I lived on the South Side my entire childhood and have lived in the city itself at least 30 years, on every side in many hoods. Please dont fucking dare tell me that my lived experience of institutional racism that is supported by actual data and history that I know from 15 years of research. Dont fucking dare pretend racism isnt a serious problem in a city where blacks were placed in seperate housing, slaughtered in race riots, systematically tortured on a fucking post about a racist murder just for your ego based on such laughably limited “experience”. I expected better from this group. Im seriously pissed as hell right now.
I scrolled up an didn’t see anyone saying that racism isn’t a problem in Chicago.
Oh look, more actual data. Stop saying racism doesnt exist based on bullshit assumptions.
http://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicago-marijuana-arrest-statistics/Content?oid=4198958
http://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago/chicago-politics-segregation-african-american-black-white-hispanic-latino-population-census-community/Content?oid=3221712
http://gawker.com/5948686/the-most-racist-city-in-america-chicago
http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/March-2015/Chicago-Highly-Segregated-By-Any-Measure/
http://chicagoist.com/2015/05/07/chicago_claims_dubious_honor_of_mos.php
http://www.dusablemuseum.org/mobile
@weirwoodtreehugger – I take minimizing a consensus that Chicago is the most segregated city in the country – particularly when I, knowing this was the consensus for many years running, still gave some room for error – as minimizing racism, since segregation is institutionalized racism. I make no apology for being pissed as all hell at such deliberate racism, because pretending your assumptions about the racial situation in a city you know nothing about are facts because you want to blame racism on one region and ignoring real suffering for your feels IS RACISM. FUCK that shit. Just stop.
Dear White People,
Yes, Racism is YOUR problem. Yes, EVERYWHERE in this country.
PS if you wanna talk about places thag might be more segregated than Chicago, you would be looking at cities like Milwaukee and Detroit. In the fucking NORTH. Which was my point btw obv. Which is why I wrote “maybe”. Because that specific city being the mostest segregated isnt what matters, it is that racism is everywhere.
PPS: Yes Chicago is more segregated than NYC. by a lot actually. I know because I stayed in NYC briefly. JK, but the integration they have there wpuld never ever happen in Chicago, white people would never live in the same building as black people like that.
ppps: great article on NYC segregation: http://danielkayhertz.com/2014/04/14/how-segregated-is-new-york-city/
Dear KL — Attacking people for things they never said is not cool on this site. As far as I know, every regular on this blog agrees that racism is a huge problem everywhere in the US (and in the world, for that matter. If there is a place in the US where racism and segregation are not a problem, I don’t know about it. But the problem is, what is at issue is your statement that Chicago is the most segregated city in the US You seem to be saying that anyone who does not agree with that — who says that other cities might be equally or even more segregated (for example, Charleston) — is saying that racism and segregation do not exist at all, or exist only in the south, which nobody at all is saying. I am sorry that you are angry, but that does not excuse willfully misinterpreting people. Please cool down and reread the comments carefully. Everyone here is pretty upset about this horrible crime; we don’t need to start a flame war here over something that nobody said.
Seriously. Nobody ever said there was no segregation in Chicago let alone that there is no racism there. All Brooked said was that she disagreed with the opinion that Chicago is the most segregated city. Which you evidently agree with as you posted a link about segregation in NYC.
I’m not sure I see the point in arguing about which city is the most racist since the whole country is and it just manifests differently in different regions.
KL is making some good points and people have disputed xir claim, which xe has backed up with links. Let’s follow them and see what they say. some city has to be the most segregated. Why couldn’t it be Chicago? Do we know for a fact it is not?
I happen to have a friend who grew up in the Cabrini Greens (read as: definitely black and treated like shit by the cops) and was framed for murder by the police. He was still in his teens. He spent 17 yrs in prison. Chi-town does sound like a racist nightmare.
From on of KL’s links:
The argument is over. It’s time to concede. The point was that it is a northern city and a comment was made about the south that suggested racism was a southern problem. KL made a statement. That statement was refuted. Evidence has been provided in favor of KL’s statement. Now people are complaining that there is an argument? Really, WWTH?
Y’all, are we whitesplaining segregation right now? Is a that a thing we should be doing?
A 2015 study by Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight found that Chicago was the most segregated large American city, followed by Atlanta and then Milwaukee.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/
Silver’s study is based on a study by Logan et al at Brown University in 2010, which in turn is based on the 2010 census data.
https://www.russellsage.org/publications/diversity-and-disparities
Logan et al found that Chicago had the highest segregation, measured statistically, but that it was declining. This decline isn’t due to black and white people mixing but more because of the rise of Chicago’s Hispanic population, who do not feel bound by the traditional red-lined neighbourhoods.
This matches a general pattern across most large American cities in which Hispanic people act as the catalyst for changing demographic segregation. The cases where this is notably untrue are Denver and Atlanta, where the Hispanic population is becoming segregated itself.
I’m not disputing whether or not Chicago is the most segregated city. I’m disputing this
Because nobody did that.
In fact, Brooked said
I don’t think it’s productive to argue over what city is the most racist when racism is everywhere in our culture. Does Chicago being the most segregated mean it’s the most racist? I don’t know.
Southern cities are a bit less segregated in part because the federal government had to intervene in Jim Crow states. Did that intervention make white southerners less racist than white northerners? Considering that the Confederate flag is still popular and the southern strategy continues to keep these states GOP strongholds, I don’t think so.
If you measure racism by segregated cities, the north looks the most racist. If you measure racism by voting patterns and nostalgia for slavery, the south looks the most racist. If you measure racism by Google search patterns, the south and rural northeast are the most racist. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/28/the-most-racist-places-in-america-according-to-google/
So which metric is the most accurate? You could debate that all day, with each person likely to defend the region they feel attached to and never settle on anything. It’s a debate we all lose because racism is baked into our culture no matter where we are. That’s why I said there’s no point in debating which city is the most racist.
@Lea
No one said the South was more racist than the North. Or at least I didn’t say it, for sure. I said it was one of many reasons it would fail if it seceded. The only person who tried to make a point about any area being more racist than the other is KL, who pointed that the North is just as racist as the South by saying Chicago is the most segregated.
I’d like to point out that all of the East coast area has the most concentrated amount of KKK chapters in the USA, mostly concentrated in the South.
It seems to me all of you East-coasters, both Northern and Southern, have a real Klan problem over there…which explains Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, actually.
My advisor at UNO wrote this book in the 1990s:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo3627598.html
I think he picked Chicago because that’s where he happened to be, but the analysis of exactly why and how segregation became baked into the city’s infrastructure is still interesting.
I remember decades ago hearing someone (a comedian?) say ‘in the South, white people don’t care how close black people get as long as they don’t get too big; in the North white people don’t care how big black people get as long as they don’t get too close.’
… Erm… Strewth.
Guys, I’m pretty sure this whole mess was just a misunderstanding. o_o;;
. I said it was one of many reasons it would fail if it seceded.
I shouldn’t have said this. The context behind this sentence is me thinking of a worst case scenario with the most cartoonist caricature of the South. I shan’t speak of this again. I am sorry Lea and to anyone who lives in the Southern states. I really should just fucking shut up.
Imma just go talk about shit I know, like video games and crap before I get in trouble.
OK.
I misunderstood the objections. Sorry.
@KL
Chicago is maybe the most segregated place in the country, or at least bad enough, and white cops torture and kill black people there. Racism is not a southern problem.
“The hell? Chicago is not “maybe the most segregated place in the country”, that’s a baseless and bizarre claim. There’s racism and police brutality, that’s sadly in everywhere.”
So I said maybe and “or at least etc” and was told that it was a “baseless and bizarre claim” in an insulting patronizing way when I didnt even state it definitively, which I did not because I know that it is a hard thing to nail down. Someone else called it silly. And then when I post actual data from various sources and express how crappy it feels to feel pressured to out some of my personal identity by showing you that I actually live there as well as have evidence, you claim no one said anything and Im wrong to feel anger at yet another group if I presume at least some white people basically not literally but in so many words telling me that they are experts on racism and I am a fool. Do you have any idea how many times this has happened to me from straight cis people telling me they know I am actually straight and cis like them which I am not, from white people defending racism and from sexist men defending sexism. Im sick of it and I have a limit. I make no apology for expressing my rage. That shit was racist and you need to face it and own it.
Im gonna just try to not read or write comments here or in life in generalh because it alwayd sucks even in seemingly progressive spaces.
Thank you to Lea. I am almost gonna cry cuz you are so brave to stand up and have my back and I was so scared to come back because I have been bullied online and irl. Thank you Lea.
Peace,
another comment:
“@alternatesteve90
The comment about Chicago was goofy and wring, and racism isn’t a some amorphous human flaw. The shooting has undeniable historical context of terrorist violence against black activist churches.
That’s true; just as there are some really nice and decent people in the South who aren’t racist at all, there are at least few people in the North and West who *are* racist
No shit. Are you a child? Do you see social forces or just individuals acting out of personality quirks? There are people still alive who lived under legal American apartheid and we’re all dealing with the after effects.”