The Ghost of "Mister."

by Torraine Walker

The deaths of former Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax and his wife Cerina in an apparent murder-suicide in their Annandale, VA home, followed by suspect Shamar Elkins murdering eight children in Shreveport, Louisiana before being killed by police, have shocked and outraged the country. The tragedy of these lives being taken is compounded by the fact that they were taken by the men most responsible for protecting them. [Full disclosure: Justin was a personal acquaintance. -TW]

But along with shock and outrage at their actions a familiar narrative is beginning to take shape, one that takes focus away from the victims: the idea that within every Black male body, no matter his age, education, accomplishments or economic status, is a monster waiting to emerge and destroy anyone foolish enough to get close to him.

How did we get here?

The demonization of Black men has gone on as long as Black people have been on American soil but the modern version begins with radical feminist theory that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s that viewed all men as patriarchal oppressors by the fact of their gender. This failed to take into account that Black men have never had the collective power to oppress and have historically been more progressive on women’s rights. Through widespread distribution of creative works like The Color Purple, Waiting To Exhale, and daytime talk shows reinforcing the stereotype of the sorry, abusive, no-good Black man, the Black Boogeyman trope was sold to the public.

But the data doesn’t back these tropes. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, intimate partner violence in the Black community is bi-directional. Put another way, abusive men and women are abusing each other. But the prevailing narrative is of the Black brute abusing his woman.

This propaganda has found its widest reach with the rise of social media. Social media flattens discussion of complex issues, dicing them into easily digestible moments that notoriously lack accurate information or proper context. Discussions around intimate partner violence are necessary, but they are being led by individuals more focused on selling anti-Black male hatred or venting their personal trauma instead of finding solutions. And many of those individuals look like us.

We can no longer rely on an academic or activist being “skinfolk” to assume we’re getting correct information. Many of them are more aggressive at demonizing Black men and boys than the racists they claim to be fighting.

How does all this connect to recent incidents? Instead of acknowledging and putting energy into data based investigations of the causes of bi-directional intimate partner violence, lobbying for resources for couples counseling, training in conflict resolution, and addressing mental health challenges in the Black community, demonizing Black males has become the only acceptable solution to violence against women and it fails to address the issues that people claiming to want to protect Black women want to solve.

And all paths on that ideological road lead back to the Black boogeyman trope, the folk devil that can be adapted to fit any form of media from urban legends to newspapers to entertainment, right up to the present day, because it will always find an audience willing to believe it, a system willing to codify it, and a society willing to disenfranchise and kill because of its fear of it. Only now the tropes are coming out of Black misandrist mouths, providing a useful shield for white liberals and progressives to avoid being labeled racist.

There is legitimate trauma that Black men and women face from abusive individuals in our communities, and it must be stopped. But when the response is based in intellectual dishonesty and one sided condemnation based in emotionalism are allowed to run wild, nobody heals.

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