In 1998, when James Byrd, Jr. was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged to his death, the press exploded. The American public was outraged, and rightfully so. His captors and killers, three men between the ages of 23 and 31, and two of the men were known to be associated with the Ku Klux Klan in their small Texan town. Two of the men were ultimately sentenced to death, the third to life in prison.[1] The media explosion made me question the constant evolution of news and media, and how this plays a major role in people’s perceptions of hate crimes, and crimes against humanity in general.
Rewind about 100 years, maybe 150. Between Emancipation and the Depression in the United States, over 3,000 African Americans were lynched in the American South.[2] Instead of public outrage; however, people often rushed to the event, eager to watch and take part in the brutality. Take, for example, Langston Hughes’s short story Father and Son, included in his book The Ways of White Folks. In this story, 20-year-old Bert, the son of a white plantation owner and his slave, is commanded to return home from boarding school, only to find that his father still treats him coldly and without any respect. Still, Bert pushes the patience of his father and the white people of the town when he doesn’t act “right” towards them. Eventually, Bert and his father argue, his father has a gun, and Bert strangles him in a moment of rage. Unwilling to let the mob kill him, Bert decides to use his last bullet to kill himself in his father’s house. Unsatisfied with lynching an already-dead man, the mob goes after Bert’s uninvolved brother Willie, also the child of the plantation owner and Bert’s mother, and lynches him as well. Hughes ends the story flatly, illustrating the racist and careless reporting:
Bert Lewis was lynched last night, and his brother, Willie Lewis, today. The sheriff of the county is unable to identify any members of the mob. Colonel Norwood’s funeral has not yet been held. The dead man left no heirs.[3]
Instead of the outrage that would be instantly voiced today, via Facebook, Twitter, or the general media, postcards depicting the grotesque act of lynching were sent around the country until about the 1940s. James Allen has collected many of these postcards, creating a book, film, and travelling exhibit around them. Rather than labeling these acts as terroristic and horrible, the postcards seem to trivialize the action. When people send postcards today, their purpose is usually to say “look where I’ve been, see what I saw”—so what does this say about the postcards?
This leads me to another question—consider the information overload that most people encounter everyday in 2011. While people are more aware than ever before of events happening internationally, there is so much information out there now that people have become almost numb to most of it. We’re so overloaded with images and stories, how can we even begin to feel like we’re helping or doing something about it? Most of the time, when people don’t want to deal with a problem, they refuse to see it. Is that why there’s still no anti-lynching law in the United States?
[1] “Third Defendant Is Convicted in Dragging Death in Texas.” The New York Times (19 November 1999). http://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/19/us/third-defendant-is-convicted-in-dragging-death-in-texas.html?ref=jamesjrbyrd (accessed March 11, 2011)
[2] “Lynchings, By State and Race, 1882-1968.” Charles Chestnutt Digital Archive (2001).http://faculty.berea.edu/browners/chesnutt/classroom/lynchings_table_state.html (accessed March 10, 2011).
The idea that information overload might result in a refusal to deal with a challenging subject is a fascinating idea. However, I think it’s embedded in a larger issue: I believe that not legislating against lynchings and not addressing hate crimes are more functions of refusing to deal with a dark past. Of course, this is a problem we museum professionals have to face. How do we tackle difficult subjects like slavery and hate crimes in a way that stimulates productive dialogue among our visitors, and between visitors and the museum?
I’m still really interested in this idea of information overload and how it affects our perceptions and receptions of tragedies. In some cases, Web 2.0 and other technologies that facilitate information overload have helped us respond to tragedies in new ways. However, it’s usually the Facebook group or blog with the best marketing (or the most annoying followers, who invite everyone they know) that can capture our limited attention. I think that such technology has created “causes du jour” in popular internet culture that filter down into “real world” popular culture. For instance, a few years back, you’d see “Save Darfur” signs and t-shirts everywhere. Of course, many people have been doing what they can to stop human rights atrocities in Sudan. But, for many others, “Save Darfur” was a trendy cause to align oneself with, and these people have since moved on to the next cause, despite the turmoil that remains. Building off of what you’ve said, I think that information overload has almost trivialized tragedies.
I do think that information overload can trivialize tradegies does happen with the media and the news attempting to cover every aspect of a major disaster or crime and does merge into popular culture. We have seen it coming faster with the tragedy in Japan and celebrities and talk shows taking the issue http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2011/03/15/sbt.stars.slammed.japan.hln?hpt=C2. But I still do not knock the power of coverage and the media bringing an issue to light is important. I think that not all media is created equal and that some forms may be more legitimate then others. I think there is still a give and take between the audience and the media and people choose to see or read and support what they want while the media does equal push and pull from the audience.
I have to agree that for the most part, the lack of action and awareness is due to an immense sense of shame our country has about the events of the past. Many want to put away the past, and perhaps view no need for such specific legislation. I think that we can all agree that as museum professionals, we should advocate for awareness and recognize the fact that there are still injustices that are vastly ignored. We, as a whole, need to understand that our society is not perfect, and that is something that people don’t want to acknowledge. This fact just compounds the various problems museums have with connecting to the public.
I agree that the growing awareness of specific causes has been “trendy” in some cases, but I also agree with you Mia about the great good that media coverage can have, and that some forms of this are more legitimate than others. I do think it’s hard though, when there are so many media sources, for people to pick and choose which sources are legitimate and which aren’t. This even makes me think of the major push towards creating or marketing products where some of the proceeds go the the tragedy of the moment–again, there are so many, and many of these companies aren’t held accountable once they actually have the money that’s supposed to go to help…
In a way, I feel like our contemporary ‘information overload’ is a problem that is the result of the positive development of the internet. In other words, this is not a problem of too much information vs. enough information. The choice is between too much information vs. no information. We have to ask: if there was no youtube, wikileaks, twitter, cell phone cameras, would this information be shared at all? I doubt it. Would the people who are numbed and desensitized by this information have taken action if they had been exposed to just the right dose of horrific pictures or stories? Again, I doubt it.
What I really struggle with is the impotence I feel when I become aware of some horrific tragedy occuring somewhere in the world. Information is certainly more widely available, but I do not feel that this has been accompanied by an increase in my ability to affect change. That is my frustration.
I agree with you Jacob, the abundance of information is not the problem. In my mind, it is the trivialization of information. Technology has created a new way to interact with information. Maybe as a result of information overload, we are no longer affected the same way by the information we receive.
I don’t fully buy this though. It really isn’t the amount of information. It is the way receive information. Virtual reality, A.I., and even the internet have created a different consciousness. Information out there on the web is both a part of us and part of a completely fabricated information universe.
This makes it easier and easier to divorce oneself from the issues. Perhaps the internet is the same as the lynching postcards on some level. People in the past were able to project unspeakable feelings on these postcard (both bad and good), the same way we project our involvement in the world on the internet. The internet may just be a new translation of the way we communicate those things we don’t speak about everyday, but in this postmodern world we are more and more aware of this dilemma.
I like the “causes du jour” analysis. While people undoubtedly have more access to news and current events than ever, news is also a business. Sometimes the hardest thing is finding the “objective” news amongst a sea of pundits and popular trends.
I believe the Facebook group trend reflects this as well as any example. While worthwhile groups and causes exist among them, many Facebook groups are a mixture of people who happened to hit “Like.” In today’s age of technology so many things are vying for our attention that the noteworthy news often gets jumbled with our friends’ status updates, the latest movies reviews, and whatever Charlie Sheen is doing or Lady Gaga is wearing.
That being said, I feel like a person who genuinely wishes to be well-informed can now more than ever. Things such as Google Reader and Twitter help us create our own personal news-feed to separate the wheat from the chaff. I agree with Jacob when he wrote that there is more information available but a remaining uncertainty on how when can effect real change with access to it.
The lynching postcards fascinated and horrified me. I also wondered what they reveal about a public that is eager to distribute such graphic images to their family and friends. I am most struck by the crowds of spectators present in many of the postcards. The postcards reveal that lynchings became a public event in many communities, witnessed by men, women, and children. The postcards spread images and, subsequently, understanding of the lynchings far beyond the south. Americans in other areas of the country could not claim ignorance of what was going on. As a result, I see the postcards as implicating many more people in the perpetuation of the lynchings.
Are these postcards highly disturbing? Obviously. Did they really spread understanding of lynchings far beyond the south? I don’t know. I couldn’t find any information on the website about their relative prominence in the postcard culture of the day, if there was such a thing. How many were produced? Where were they sold? Where were they sent? I’m interested to know if the book and traveling exhibit do a better job of explaining this side of the story than the website.
I would be interested in learning that too. I saw on that website that at least some of the postcards were mailed. They were not just collectors’ items.
A study of how far they traveled and how widely they spread information about lynchings would be really interesting.
Your question about an anti-lynching law today is very interesting. The recent history of James Byrd, Jr.’s killing suggests that the legislation exists. Yesterday’s lynching is today’s hate crime. I don’t know that that means there shouldn’t be an anti-lynching law, but I think hate crime legislation is wider reaching and might offer more protection for everyone in the long run.
I definitely agree, but I think it’s so disappointing that even with major pushes for the bill to go into effect since the early 20th century, it never did.