Willie Horton and the sex-race thing

Why do we have Angry White Males? Gordon Allport muses
The Nature of Prejudice Willie Horton and the sex-race thing

Make your own free website on Tripod.com

jewel kilcher

Do you hate him
'Cause he's
Pieces of you?

Lightning Rod Relationship?

Social Justice is for Everyone

Why do we have 'angry white males'?

WHITE-MAN'S GONZO OBSESSION: the Willie Horton episode highlights what may be a pervasive secret "nightmare" lurking in white man's subconscious : the fear of the powerful or dangerous "animal" Black Man. In his book, Gordon Allport delves into the phenomenon of prejudice:

Gordon W. Allport The Nature of Prejudice 1954 (pp 372, 374-376)
Sex, like anger or fear, may ramify throughout the life, and may affect social attitudes in devious ways. Like these other emotions, it is less diffuse when it is rationally and adaptively directed. But in sexual maladjustment, frustration, and conflict, a tenseness spreads outward from the erotic area of life into many by-paths. Some maintain that it is impossible to understand group prejudice in the United States, particularly the prejudice of whites toward Negroes, without reference to sex maladjustment. Dingwell, a British anthropologist, writes:

Sex dominates life in the United States in a manner and in a way which is found nowhere else in the world. Without a full appreciation of its influence and its results, no elucidation of the Negro problem is possible. [E.J. Dingwell. Racial Pride and Prejudice. London: Watts, 1946. p. 69]

White Men:

Does seeing a mixed couple

MAKE YOU MAD?

In America one seldom hears sex accusations against the Jews. Is it because there is less anti-Semitism? Is it that American Jews are more moral than European Jews? Neither explanation seems right. The reason, more probably, .... is that in America we have in the Negro a preferred target for our sexual complexes.
[Allport refers us to his Chapter 15]

There is a subtle psychological reason why Negroid characteristics favor an association of ideas with sex. The Negro seems dark, mysterious, distant -- yet at the same time warm, human, and potentially accessible. These elements of mystery and forbiddenness are present in sex appeal in a Puritanical society. Sex is forbidden; colored people are forbidden; the ideas begin to fuse. It is no accident that prejudiced people call tolerant people "niggerlovers." The very choice of the word suggests that they are fighting the feeling of attraction in themselves.

The fact that interracial sex attraction exists is proved by the millions of mixed breeds in the country. Differences in color and social status seem to be sexually exciting rather than repelling. It has often been noted that liaisons with members of lower classes seem particularly attractive to people with higher status. The daughter of the patrician family who runs away with the coachman is almost as familiar a theme in literature as is the prodigal son who wastes his substance in riotous living with lower-class women. Both reveal the same truth.

[There is intrigue in contrasting complexions. ] The attraction is further enhanced by the fact (or legend) that Negroes have an open and unashamed way of looking at life. Many people with suppressed sex lives would like the same freedom. They grow jealous and irritated at the openness and directness of sex among others. They accuse the males of extreme sexual potency, and the females of shamelessness. Even the size of the genitalia becomes a subject of jealous exaggeration. Fantasies easily get mixed with fact.

This illicit fascination may become obsessional in some localities where life is otherwise intolerably dull. In her novel Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith has described the emotional aridness of a small southern town. Escape is sought in religious orgies, or in the excitement of race conflict. Or people may see in the Negro the lusty qualities they lack, and may alternately ridicule, desire, and persecute them. Forbidden fruit arouses contrasting emotional reactions. Helen McLean writes:

In calling the Negro a child of nature, simple, lovable, without ambition, a person who gives way to his every impulse, white men have made a symbol which gives secret gratification to those who are inhibited and crippled in their instinctual satisfactions. Indeed, white men are very loath to relinquish such a symbol. [Helen V. McLean. Psychodynamic factors in racial relations. The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1946, 244. pp. 159-166 ]

Now this cross-race sexual fascination seldom expresses itself normally. The mixed dating of adolescents is virtually a social impossibility. Legal intermarriage, where possible at all, is rare and bedeviled by social complications that create grave problems even for the most devoted couples. Hence sexual liaisons are clandestine, illicit, and accompanied by feelings of guilt. Yet the fascination is so strong that this most rigid of taboos is frequently broken, more often by the white male, however, than by the white female.

The psychodynamic process that relates this sexual situation to prejudice may be described separately for the white female and the white male.

Suppose a white woman is fascinated by the taboo against the Negro male. She is unlikely to admit, even to herself, that she finds his color and his lower status attractive. She may, however, "project" his feelings, and accordingly imagine that the desire exists on the other side -- that Negro males have sexually aggressive tendencies toward her.

What is an inner temptation is perceived as an outer threat. Overgeneralizing her conflict, she develops an anxiety and hostility respecting the whole Negro race.

In the case of the white male the process may be even more complex. Suppose he is anxious concerning his own sexual adequacy and attractiveness. One study of adult prisoners discovered a close relationship between this condition and high prejudice. Men who were antagonistic toward minority groups, on the whole, showed more fierce protest against their own sexual passivity, semi-impotence, or homosexual trends. The protest took the form of exaggerated toughness and hostility. These individuals committed more crimes of a sexual nature than did those who were sexually more secure. And the pseudo masculinity of the former group made them more hostile toward minorities. [W.R. Morrow A psychodynamic analysis of the crimes of prejudiced and unprejudiced male prisoners. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1949, 13. pp. 204-212.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To steal inspiration from Samuel Clemens
white man alone can blush, and white man alone needs to.

Nsenga Warfield-Coppock points out that the white man is guilty of higher rates of horrible sexual perversions than the black man. "The prison population of gruesome sexual crime is 97 percent white, with sometimes as many as a third of incarcerated white American men in any given prison being there for sexual offenses." Nsenga Warfield-Coppock

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Friends of Diversity

Returning to Gordon Allport:

Again, a white male who is dissatisfied with his own marriage may grow envious when he hears rumors of Negro sexual prowess and license. He may also resent and fear the approach Negroes might make to white women who are potentially his. A state of rivalry may thus result, based on the same type of reasoning that says the supply of jobs is limited and if Negroes have them, whites will be deprived.

Or suppose the white male has taken his pleasure with Negro women. Such liaisons, being illicit, give rise to guilt. A wry sense of justice forces him to see that the Negro males, in principle, should have equal access to white women. Jealousy plus guilt create a disagreeable conflict. He, too, finds a way out by "projecting." It is the lecherous Negro male that is the real menace. He would deflower white womanhood. The deflowering of Negro womanhood is conveniently forgotten in the outburst of righteous indignation. The indignation is guilt evading and restorative of self-respect.

New World Coming?

Modest Proposal

Gordon Allport and his theory (augmenting Freud)
Abby Ferber delves into insecure white supremacists
A Soul Searching by Anthony Cerminaro
Susan Black: the Tiger Woods syndrome
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
Angry white men : or is it sicko jealousy
Barack Obama calls for high standards

Bob Shepherd (facebook)

interracial nation

interracial nation

The white man is, and has always been, his own worst enemy:
The American white man's malignant superiority complex has done him more harm than an invading army. [Malcolm X, p 317, Autobiography]

People ask, 'Professor Graves, you say biological races are not real?' I say, 'Yes. Biological races are not real, but socialized races are real as a heart attack, and do not confuse those two.' There are no genetic barriers to dismantling racist ideology; it is a question of whether we want to.
[See Racism is not a neccesary feature of human society]

Thanks to Professor Joseph Graves

To White Man :: Listen up. If jealousy is there, know well there is no love. You are playing a game, you are hiding sex behind love. Love is just a painted word, the reality is sex. [OSHO : white woman will save the world]

The New Martyrs

Can we, as white men, finally be able to say that
Even if we'd like to claim that 'our' woman is to blame
I know it's my own damn fault

friend me (face book)

Deep in My Heart ~ I do Believe
We Shall Overcome Some Day
Seeking social justice
Are interracial couples still targets of hate and misunderstanding? Do you have a personal story (or know first-hand) of persecution, bigotry and especially stories with a happy ending, a testimony of overcoming hatred. After all, the rainbow promise of the Good Book is that love will one day completely triumph over hatred and bigotry and fear. God bless those who courageously chose love, and believe in the rainbow. Would you share?
Bob Shepherd (facebook)