Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
What is a whitelash?
A portmanteau of “whiteness” and “backlash,” the word whitelash is defined as “a hostile or violent reaction by white people to the advances or influx of other racial or ethnic groups.” While a backlash is characterized by a negative or violent reaction to something that actually happened, a whitelash is usually a reactionary response to the prospect of something that might possibly have a negative effect on the dominant culture.
What causes a whitelash?
Black people existing.
The unfounded fear of Black freedmen using their political power to oppress white Americans begat a proactive era of racial terrorism during Reconstruction. Lyncher mobs blamed their extrajudicial murders on Black men’s unquenchable thirst for white women. Segregationist white moms spat on Black children because sitting next to black children in social studies class would upend the natural order. But, as one 17-year-old Morehouse college student wrote about pro-lynching segregationists who used violence to prevent race-mixing:
“[M]ost people who kick up this kind of dust know that it is simple dust to obscure the real question of rights and opportunities. It is fair to remember that almost the total of race mixture in America has come, not at Negro initiative, but by the acts of those very white men who talk loudest of race purity.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Whiteness is the sole cause of whitelashes.
Is there a way to recognize a whitelash is taking place?
One of the most reliable ways to differentiate between racial backlash and a political or philosophical difference is to recognize the racial differences in definitions.
Early onset whitelash is typified by the effort to demonize racial progress by redefining a common term. Nearly a century after Black Americans began…
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