Sexual fears and racism
The intersection of sexual fears and racism has deep historical roots in the United States, particularly stemming from the era of slavery and the subsequent racial dynamics. The forced migration of Africans to North America and their exploitation laid the groundwork for complex attitudes toward black sexuality. Black women, often subjected to violence and sexual exploitation by white men, were simultaneously portrayed as hypersexualized figures, reinforcing harmful stereotypes that justified these abuses. This narrative was further complicated by societal perceptions of black men, who were often seen through a lens of fear and aggression, leading to violent acts like lynching as a means of social control.
The fear of black male sexuality was not just about aggression; it reflected deeper insecurities and projections of white male guilt regarding their own sexualities. These dynamics have created a legacy of racialized sexual terror, where acts of violence served both as punishment and as a means of asserting white dominance. Additionally, the concept of castration during lynching highlighted a sexualized component of oppression, intertwining themes of power, inadequacy, and desire. Authors such as James Baldwin have explored these themes, illustrating the potent mingling of fear, desire, and racial identity in American culture. Understanding this complex interplay is essential for acknowledging and addressing the persistent legacies of racism and sexual violence in contemporary society.
Sexual fears and racism
SIGNIFICANCE: The connection between sexual fears and racism has been discussed by historians, sociologists, and novelists, notably historian Lillian Smith and novelist and essayist James Baldwin. This connection is a metaphor for the interplay in American society between sex, race, gender, and power.
The mingling of sex and race has characterized racial relations since African people were forcibly brought to North America in 1619, throughout the period of slavery, and beyond. This simultaneous hated of and fascination with Black male sexuality in particular, originates in the rape of Black women by White men. Social mores of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries placed White women on a pedestal, too pure for White men to let loose their sexual passion. Though some sexual contact between White people was necessary for procreation and therefore socially acceptable, White men created the myth of lustful, insatiable Black women to justify raping them and provide a sexual outlet.
The rape of Black women was not simply a brutal form of social control and a reaffirmation of White power. The violation also signified for Black men their powerlessness to protect their wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters. Nevertheless, the threat of revenge by Black men for these atrocities was real for White men. Many Americans believed in the supposed hypervirility, promiscuity, and aggression of Black men, standardized into the Black "brute" and "buck" stereotypes, which psychologists today might see as a projection of White men's own sexual aggression and guilt. If Black women were perceived as by nature lascivious, attitudes about Black men were further exaggerated by this fear of retribution.
Lynching and Sexual Fears
The White man’s fear of Black male sexual aggression manifested itself in the use of lynching as “punishment” and social control. Exact numbers are impossible to verify, but according to historian Lillian Smith in her seminal history of the south, Killers of the Dream (1949), approximately 3,148 lynchings took place in the South from 1882 to 1946, and during that time, no member of a lynch mob was given a death sentence or life imprisonment, and only 135 people in the United States were convicted of being members of lynch mobs. The NAACP records indicate a higher number at 4,743 lynchings from 1882 to 1968. Although the desire to prevent insurrection is sometimes given as a reason for the lynchings, the most socially compelling “rationale” for the murders was to avenge Black men’s alleged sexual assaults upon White women.
Castration and Homoeroticism
Castration of Black men, though a frequent element of lynching, is often neglected in the scholarly literature. When castration is referenced, as in Winthrop Jordan’s White Over Black (1968) or in W. J. Cash’s The Mind of the South (1941), it is usually offered as further evidence of unspeakable cruelty or of White males’ feelings of sexual inadequacy in the light of cultural myths of Black male sexual prowess.
Novelist and essayist James Baldwin expands the connection between sex and racism in the novel Another Country (1960) and the short story “Going to Meet the Man” (1966). In these works, the White sheriff participates in his first lynching, and the castration reads like a sexualized rite of passage: “The man with the knife took the nigger’s privates in his hand, one hand, still smiling, as though he were weighing them. . . . Jesse felt his scrotum tighten; and huge, huge, much bigger than his father’s flaccid, hairless, the largest thing he had ever seen till then, and the blackest. The white hand stretched them, cradled them, caressed them.” An undeniable but often unmentionable aspect of the history of race relations, Baldwin suggests, is an obsession with Black male sexuality that is rooted in “a secret desire mingled with fear and guilt.”
Bibliography
Baldwin, James. Another Country. New York: Dell, 1960. Print.
Cash, W. J. The Mind of the South. New York: Vintage, 1991. Print.
"History of Lynching in America." NAACP, naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
Jordan, Winthrop D. White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550–1812. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2012. Print.
Lerner, Gerda. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York: Vintage, 1992. Print.
Gunning, Sandra. Race, Rape and Lynching: The Red Record of American Literature, 1890–1912. New York: Oxford UP, 1996. Print.
Hernton, Calvin C. Sex and Racism in America. New York: Grove, 2000. Print.
"History of Lynching in America." NAACP, naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-lynching-america. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
"Racism and Sexual Violence: What's the Connection?" Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, 2017, pcar.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdfs/tab‗2017‗racismsexual‗violence‗connections-508d.pdf. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.
Smith, Lillian, and Margaret Rose Gladney. Killers of the Dream. New York: Norton, 1994. Print.
Wade, Ryan M. and Piasecki, Maksymilian. "Whose Role is It Anyway? Sexual Racism and Sexual Positioning Among Young Sexual Minority Black Men." The Journal of Sex Research, pp. 1–12, 25 Jan. 2024, doi: 10.1080/00224499.2024.2305823. Accessed 18 Jan. 2025.