Word of the Week, 11/7-11/11/11 — lynch

The ultimate origin of the verb lynch is reasonably well established.  The term is American in origin, dating to shortly after the American Revolution.  The term lynch law dates to 1811, first appearing in the writings of Andrew Ellicott: “Captain Lynch just mentioned was the author of the Lynch laws so well known and so frequently carried into effect some years ago in the southern States in violation of every principle of justice and jurisprudence.”  Ellicott is referring to a Captain William Lynch (1742-1820) of Pittsylvania, Virginia.  Lynch led a self-created judicial tribunal during the American Revolution.

~ David Wilton, Word Myths, Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends

There is a culturally-based legend that lynch is of Irish origin, dating back to 1493 in Galway, Ireland.  The legend, as retold by David Wilton in his book Word Myths, is that a mayor of the city hanged his own son for murder.  This supposed origin assumes that the verb developed from the mayor’s name, James Lynch Fitz Stephen, but there is no evidence that the verb to lynch was used before 1836 in America.  Wilton finds that the lynch laws of Captain William Lynch of Pittsylvania, VA, which clearly operated outside of jurisprudence under Lynch’s tribunal, to be the most likely origin.  Other stories have suggested another Virginian, Judge Charles Lynch, who presided over trials of Tory sympathizers, but Wilton argues that these have every appearance of being legitimate legal proceedings.  Another possibility is Lynches Creek in South Carolina, where vigilantes met, ca. 1768–Wilton does not elaborate what type of vigilantes they were.  (115-6, Word Myths)

During the period of the Reconstruction’s demise, as southern states and border states successfully disenfranchised the bulk of their “negro” populations, lynching black men or women, even children, became an acceptable activity for many southerners.  The proof of this is revealed in the confidence Klan members and other citizens had in their actions, as they removed their hoods to be photographed with the trees from which their victims hung.  In his controversial, best-selling book Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen points to this time period in particular as one of the lowest points in race relations in our country when lynching reached an all-time high.  This period was traditionally glossed over in American history textbooks to promote the idea of sustained forward progression in American history, which deliberately neglected the initial successes for the former slave population following the Civil War, including the achievement in elected offices, business, academics, law and the arts.  The following policy-driven period of regress, during which the federal government legalized the separation and segregation of black Americans from white, turned the verb lynch into a uniquely charged word in American race relations.  (Images lynchings with fearless vigilantes are available online.  The website, http://withoutsanctuary.org/, features photographs and postcards of lynchings–some of which include white immigrants, such as Italians.)

"In sight of thousands"

Aside from other lesser slang usages in the drug world, the term remains highly charged and is used to reference equally charged scenarios, often involving criminal accusations.  It is particularly used during situations where public opinion seems strongly against a black American defendant often before trials have even commenced, let alone been concluded.  In other cases, it has been used when the defendant has been sentenced to the death penalty, such as the recent case of Troy Davis because it was perceived to have followed with insufficient evidence.  In this case it is typically referred to as legalized lynching.  In other words, the term is deliberately invoked to recall the prior tradition of lawless violence and killing, which often occurred without a response from legal authorities, either out of sympathy to the lynching or out of helplessness to prevent it–or both.

It is also the case that lynching is used in reference to the media coverage.  Ishmael Reed references “media stampedes” surrounding Clarence Thomas, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, Kobe Bryant and Michael Vick which created virtual lynchings and assumed guilt before trial because of media fervor.  (Ishmael Reed, Mixing it Up: Taking on the media bullies and other reflections)  The most recent usage is by GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain in one of his political ads, claiming high tech lynching for media coverage of a sexual harassment charge and settlement in his past.

This is a perfect example of how history shapes our understanding of a word.  In this case, the word’s origins are less important than the word’s use and development through America’s era of legalized prejudice and discrimination.  In William Brennan’s Dehumanizing the Vulnerable, When word games take lives, he describes the verbal gymnastics by which one portion of the population dehumanizes another group in order to justify their mistreatment of that group.  (For more from Brennan, see: Dehumanizing words and writing the “other”.)  He does this by identifying the alternative categories in which the group is placed: Deficient Human, Nonhuman, Animal, Parasite, Disease, Inanimate Object, Waste Product, and Nonperson.  There are countless examples of prominent Americans and legal courts using this tactic to justify various ill-treatments, the bulk of which are during the fights over the morality and legality of slavery and during the age when lynching was at its highest point.  The correlation is not an accident.  The word lynch is loaded with ideas such as: “The negro race is … a heritage of organic and psychic debris,” (Dr. William English, 1903) and “The negro is … one of the lower animals,” (Professor Charles Carroll, 1900) and “They [Negroes] are parasites,” (Dr. E. T. Brady, 1909).  (6-7, Brennan)  The historical scars from the word and action has informed, if not created, its rhetorical usage today.

Dehumanizing words and writing the “other”

The Meeting of Cortes and Moctezuma

I have recently been rereading the controversial but beautiful and clever book, The Conquest of America, The question of the Other, in preparation for teaching about the clash of Old World and New World cultures.  The book is not intended to be empirical history, rather it is a narrative account of the Spanish discovery and subsequent conquest of the “other” in the New World.  Todorov, prefering to use the antiquated categorization of exemplary history, purposefully crafted a moral treatise.  As the author of the latest edition’s forward writes,

it is a form of dialogue in which the author has attempted to mediate between two extremes: on the one hand, the conventional historicist objective of reproducing “the voices of these figures ‘as they really are,’” and on the other, the subjugation of “the other” to the self, so as “to make him [the other] into a marionette” whose strings are operated by the author.

The point was to call attention to the ethical response of the Europeans to other cultures.  Thus, Todorov speaks of the discovery the self makes of the other.  This is a deeply personal question for Todorov who grew up as a foreigner in France, having left Cold War Bulgaria.  He has, with other Bulgarians in France, written or commented about the estrangement he felt.  Additionally, he has written on the subject of totalitarian governments, such as Voices from the Gulag: Life and Death in Communist Bulgaria, published by Penn State University Press in 2000.  Both accounts show deep analysis of primary sources to express the situation and to insure that the world does not forget.

Discussions of this type are often found in historical works or works with a historical context, because history grants the opportunity for a laboratory of human response.  Our interpretation of history is, in fact, often guided by such principles (though, in fairness, we should ask ourselves how often we guide the conclusions in accord with those principles).

He dedicates Conquest to “the memory of a Mayan woman devoured by dogs,” based on an almost passing mention of her destruction by Diego de Landa—a woman whose name history has long forgotten, if it ever knew it in the first place.  This kind of attention on the person whom society literally discards is always relevant.

Like Todorov, William Brennan, author of Dehumanizing the Vulnerable, When Word Games take Lives, is also interested in the ways in which societies dehumanize others.  Both gentlemen focus on the sources and the words.  Whereas Todorov is a philosopher, Brennan’s  field is social work.  Todorov argues that the natives of Mexico were generally mere objects to the Spanish and that the Spanish overwhelmed them by reading the social and political tensions existing around the Aztecs to create an advantage, while Brennan looks more broadly at patterns from within societies that are set into motion against others.  Looking at many different societies, Brennan believes, despite the varying languages at play, that there are certain patterns for dehumanizing society’s less desirable groups of people and that once dehumanized there is a pretense for eliminating them (or forcing them into prison camps or disenfranchising them, etc.).

Brennan’s range is a wide one.  He covers America, Nazi Germany, Rome and the Soviet Union.  He is also broad in his identification of dehumanized members of society.  Often discussions of the “other” or the “subaltern” are identified with the academic left, but Brennan, a professor at St. Louis University, is very careful to include the unborn and the elderly or infirm (dependent discards) alongside women, European Jews, enemies of the Soviet regime, African-Americans and Native-Americans.  It is his contention that against all these groups a systematic “verbal gymnastics” was orchestrated to devalue the target group—often by respected members from within the society, such as doctors, professors and political leaders.  These patterns are briefly summarized in his chart shown below, but all focus on the deliberate redefining of a member of the target group as something simply not human.  (To read the chart more easily, click on it and it will enlarge it in a new screen.)

Brennan's "Semantics of Oppression"

There are similarities between these two men, their goals and their conclusions, but there are some important differences.  On the one hand, Todorov suggests an innate response that is preconditioned by culture and revealed through the texts.  For example, in the chapter, “Reasons for Victory,” he is not concerned with the accuracy of the Spanish accounts in their descriptions of Aztec actions, so much as he is concerned with the accounts themselves.  In other words, it is the Spaniards’ perceptions that interest him as they identify the Aztecs (the “others”).  His research of the particular event is extensive and thorough—he has worked on other collections related to the voice of these conquered peoples, as well—and it is selective and focused, not at all a survey.

Brennan, on the other hand, is not discussing encounters and the discovery of the “other,” but rather campaigns to convince and justify to “good, average citizens” why a target group should be treated differently and ultimately horrifically.  Brennan contends that most citizens do not stand by while other citizens have been treated brutally without first being convinced that they should, at minimum, look the other way, and at most, participate with vigor.

Both authors continue to be relevant despite the years that have passed since their publications (Todorov in 1982 and Brennan in 1995) and the continued developments in the field of history, as both authors clearly intend.  While in theory they represent opposite poles in the academic world (I exaggerate slightly), there is nonetheless common ground that may suggest inconsistencies within the left and right.  In my opinion, both should stimulate extended thought and dialogue about various current events, such as international relations, immigration, health care, abortion and same-sex marriage, among others.