The Afro American Newspaper framed three ladies standing with nooses around their neck in protest against lynching in Georgia on January 1st, 1946. Lynching refers to death by hanging by the white mob. I chose women in protest as opposed to a violent, voyeuristic lynch mob scene because it demonstrates taking an individual stance against racial segregation and atavism. The women depicted in the picture stand outside a forest. Note the trees are blurred as the camera lens primarily focuses on the three ladies. Here, the photographer attempts to render black people visible among the community. The rope signifies the enslavement carried on after the abolishment of slavery. They wrap the rope around their neck in an attempt to gain control of a
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In contemporary society, most of our interactions are with anonymous people and thus society is left without a way for identifying people. In the 1950’s, new criminal identification tactics were created including fingerprinting and DNA profiling, yet the word of any white person was always superior to that of a black one. Minorities were not given the right of innocent until proven guilty; instead, they were incarcerated or killed for crimes they did not commit, purely because they fit into society’s image of the ideal criminal. Emmett Till’s killer walked free, just as the killers of the quadruple killing of two young African-American couples: George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, in Walton County, Georgia (REFERENCE). The FBI investigated it in 1946, but they were unable to discover sufficient evident for the U.S District Attorney to prosecute anyone (REFERENCE). Criminality was based on fixed physiognomic characteristics of the late nineteenth century. Dark skin indicated a predisposition toward social deviance. Racial profiling is predominant today as citizens within urban communities are carded regularly. Law enforcement officials collect suspect’s information and put it into a database to detect potential criminals. Therefore, the process of identification is construed by the reciprocity of perception that is prejudicial (Groebner, 2007. American eugenicists asserted that a primitive black man had a facial angle of seventy degrees and compared their intellect and moral sentiments to that of an animal (Brown, 2005). Likewise, women were deemed emotionally unstable and less intelligent because they had smaller brains. Therefore, language reaffirms the existing class and racial hierarchies while preserving a white male patriarchal
In contemporary society, most of our interactions are with anonymous people and thus society is left without a way for identifying people. In the 1950’s, new criminal identification tactics were created including fingerprinting and DNA profiling, yet the word of any white person was always superior to that of a black one. Minorities were not given the right of innocent until proven guilty; instead, they were incarcerated or killed for crimes they did not commit, purely because they fit into society’s image of the ideal criminal. Emmett Till’s killer walked free, just as the killers of the quadruple killing of two young African-American couples: George W. and Mae Murray Dorsey, and Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, in Walton County, Georgia (REFERENCE). The FBI investigated it in 1946, but they were unable to discover sufficient evident for the U.S District Attorney to prosecute anyone (REFERENCE). Criminality was based on fixed physiognomic characteristics of the late nineteenth century. Dark skin indicated a predisposition toward social deviance. Racial profiling is predominant today as citizens within urban communities are carded regularly. Law enforcement officials collect suspect’s information and put it into a database to detect potential criminals. Therefore, the process of identification is construed by the reciprocity of perception that is prejudicial (Groebner, 2007. American eugenicists asserted that a primitive black man had a facial angle of seventy degrees and compared their intellect and moral sentiments to that of an animal (Brown, 2005). Likewise, women were deemed emotionally unstable and less intelligent because they had smaller brains. Therefore, language reaffirms the existing class and racial hierarchies while preserving a white male patriarchal