{"id":2216,"date":"2006-03-31T08:21:57","date_gmt":"2006-03-31T15:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/03\/31\/2216\/"},"modified":"2006-03-31T08:21:57","modified_gmt":"2006-03-31T15:21:57","slug":"2216","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=2216","title":{"rendered":"White Guys Gone Wilding?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update:<\/b>Tiffany at Blackfeminism.org has an excellent post to elaborate of how the slang of the late 80s ended up leading to the media and police incorrectly coining the concept of wilding.<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

The Duke Lacrosse team rape case has really touched a nerve with me, and one of the things that bothers me most is the discrepancies between how White men’s crimes and black men’s crimes are covered in the popular media. Since it is no longer politically correct to use blatant racist language or explicitly racial terms in these cases, we have to look beyond the surface. Black men who are accused of committing crimes against Whites, especially White women, are not directly labeled “scary Black men”\u009d but everything about the way the story is told promotes the “scary out of control Black man persona.”\u009d One of the most troubling ways this is done is by the use of special terms coined in honor of Black men’s crimes or criminal involvement.<\/p>\n

The most famous example of this is the term “wilding.”\u009d The term wilding was used to describe the attack of a White woman in Central Park in the late 1980s. Scared Whites suddenly worried that groups of young Black and Latino men would descend on innocent White women and attack them, like that has supposedly done to this woman. The term was almost exclusively used for young Black and Brown men, and as such has became synonymous with them. What is even more striking it that through DNA evidence and a confession by an imprisoned man, we later found out that this group of young men didn’t attack the Central Park jogger and in 2002 their sentences were vacated (DNA evidence confirmed that it was a lone attacker, who was a Latino man.). Why not use the term wilding to talk about what the rape survivor said happened at Duke. One of the regular commenters on my blog, Anthony<\/a>, reminded me of this term, when he argued that the attack at Duke was an example of wilding. I wondered if popular media outlets will use the term wilding, or will they come up with some special code word that referred to groups of young White men who attack women (especially Black women). Probably not. When White men behave badly it is usually framed as a problem with the individual White man or the small group of White men involved, but it is almost never a collective statement about the problems with White guys in America.<\/p>\n

Another example of this is the whole <\/a>“Stop Snitching”\u009d<\/a> phenomenon, which has been labeled as a huge threat to the criminal justice system. The term “Stop Snitching”\u009d has been connected with an underground video out of Baltimore. “Stop Snitchin'”\u009d has also been advertised on T-shirts that have become very popular mostly among young urban Black and Brown kids. If you watched shows like America’s Most Wanted or the nightly news, you would think the “Stop Snitchin”\u009d phenomenon is new and young Black men created it. However, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the idea of not snitchin’ has been around for a long time, way before Hip Hop and way before the T-shirts. In fact, I was watching the Abrams Report<\/a>, since he has been covering the Duke case, and he kept alluding to the editorial that he was going to do at the end of the show. The editorial was about “Stop Snitchin.”\u009d My initial reaction was good somebody finally gets it. These Duke boys are living by the “Stop Snitchin”\u009d code of ethics. It’s not just poor Black and Brown people and Hip Hop artists. Well much to my chagrin Abrams didn’t even connect the Duke case to this phenomenon even though it was so blatantly obvious…the Duke lacrosse players need to start snitchin.<\/p>\n

The trend of giving special labels to Black men’s bad behavior (or in some cases alleged bad behavior) makes it seem as if Black men invented gang rape or the code of silence that prevents snitchin. If the young wealthy White men can hide beyond their attorneys and say they are not “snitchin”\u009d on advice of counsel, the outcome is the similar…the crime is harder to solve. If a group of these White guys decide to have a party where they invite strippers and engage in wilding, the outcome is similar–another woman is sexually assaulted. Unfortunately, most people(especially White folks) in American culture don’t see these behaviors as similar. They think that one Black person’s bad behavior is somehow representative of all Black people, not the individual Black person or people involved. They think subconsciously or consciously that Black men are dangerous and White men are the innocent boys next door. So next time you hear a special lable for Black men’s bad behavior. Please think twice.<\/p>\n

PS–And just as a side note, the attorney for the Duke lacrosse players needs to think twice before he decides to describe the rush to judgment of these young men as a “lynch mob mentality.”\u009d Lynch mobs didn’t kill White men who were accused of sexually assaulting Black women. Read your history.<\/p>\n

Also posted at Rachel’s Tavern<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update:Tiffany at Blackfeminism.org has an excellent post to elaborate of how the slang of the late 80s ended up leading to the media and police incorrectly coining the concept of wilding. The Duke Lacrosse team rape case has really touched … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123,54,93,96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duke-rape-case","category-media-criticism","category-race-racism-and-related-issues","category-rape-intimate-violence-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}