Don’t blame me for the sins of other white women
“To Kill A Mockingbird” is one of my favorite movies, probably my favorite movie because it reminds me of my father (but doesn’t every daughter of a lawyer think her dad is Atticus Finch?). The scene that defines the film for me is the cross examination of Mayella Ewell, the young white woman who falsely accused a Black man of raping her. Gregory Peck, a/k/a Atticus, gently but methodically rips apart her lie, revealing what many in the gallery already knew: The Black man was the victim of the white woman’s fabrication.
This is a fiction based in reality. The Scottsboro Boys were arrested, tried, and jailed due to the lies of two white women. The fact that they were ultimately released is irrelevant to their ordeal. Emmett Till was murdered by men who believed the lies of a woman who only recanted on her deathbed. Susan Smith blamed a mythical Black man for killing the two sons she, herself, had murdered. These are just three famous examples. There are legions of anonymous others.
I’ve mentioned this every time I’ve written about Black Lives Matter. I’ve mentioned this when retelling the heroic work of my own father in Mississippi during the summer of 1967. It is not something we can, or should ignore. It is not something we can debate.
White women have lied, and Black men have died.
But I assume no generational guilt for the lies of women I never met, share no bloodline with, and hold in contempt. I bear no kinship with them, and despite this recent Come to Jesus moment where we are all supposed to reflect on the sins of our race, I am not Mayella Ewell. Most of the white women reading this are just like me: Disgusted with the crimes of white women, but unwilling to seek forgiveness for the crimes of strangers.
That, I think, is what enraged me about a tweet from an editor from the Washington Post named Karen Attiah. Over the weekend, Attiah wrote the following on her Twitter feed:
“The lies and tears of White women hath wrought:
-The 1921 Tulsa Massacre -Murder of Emmet Till -Exclusion of Black women from feminist movements
-53% of White women voting for Trump
White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s’
And not calling for revenge”
The first thing that jumps out at me is the irony of “Karen” Attiah using the name “Karen” as a slur. The second thing that jumps out is that she misspelled Emmett Till’s name (unforgivable). The third thing is that she actually capitalized the word “White” (progress, I guess, since we’re now supposed to be capitalizing “Black”). The fourth, and most important thing, is that she is an editor at one of the Big Three papers who issued a veiled threat against an entire race and gender of strangers, who are-in her mind-responsible for all of these historical horrors. I’m surprised that she didn’t include us as masterminds of the Rwandan genocide.
We are all living through a complicated and difficult moment. People who have known each other for years have started to measure their words, worried about how the things they say will be taken by friends, family and coworkers. If that is a necessary step on the road to mutual respect and understanding, I’m not opposed to a little bit of cautious introspection. It’s usually good to empathize with other people and their feelings (although not to the extent of making up entirely new pronouns with “x” “y” and “z” in them to placate the sensitivities of those with gender dysphoria. Pick one of the already existing genders, please, don’t make one up.).
But it becomes very problematic when people are told that, because of their race, their color, their gender, and other things over which they have no control, they are responsible for crimes committed by people who happen to share those immutable traits. Would I be able to blame every Black man for drugging and raping women just because Bill Cosby has been convicted of doing it? (Irony being, I think Cosby is innocent.) Would I be justified in holding every Black man responsible for stabbing his wife to death just because O.J. was put on trial and acquitted? (Irony being, I think O.J. is guilty.) Is this what we have come to, collective guilt?
There is something incredibly insidious about Karen Attiah and her thinly-veiled psychological assault on women who look like me. She is in a position of power and authority, and her voice carries a lot further than mine. She is also protected, these days, by her race. When I wrote things on Twitter that my editor at the Inquirer did not like, I was fired.
Attiah, the self-styled “award-winning” journalist, is still there. And she has many defenders, including among the white women who responded to her now-deleted tweet with the bleeting, supine, apologetic tones of Stockholm Syndrome victims.
My white father did everything he could to combat the type of racism perpetuated by fictitious Mayella Ewells, and her real-life counterparts.
His white daughter, who doesn’t like threats, will not be apologizing.