The Anti-Lynching Act Won't Hide the Real Threat to Black Lives in Progressive Cities

   

Conservative Resurgence

 

Published on Mar 9, 2020

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When most Americans think of lynching, they summon images of the horrific murders of American blacks, particularly in the years of the Jim Crow South. To describe such murders as "bias-motivated acts of terror," as Cory Booker has, would certainly be accurate. "This bill," Booker says, "will not undo the damage," but it "will acknowledge the wrongs in our history. It will honor the memories of those brutally killed."

So, when Senate Democrats offered their proposed new law, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, I had assumed that it would be a symbolic congressional action to recognize these injustices that took place and to honor the victims. Considering that the act passed the Senate unanimously, that's likely what most senators also believed.

But that's not what the act is, and that's certainly not its intent. The real purpose of the act appears to be the legal redefining of the word "lynching" to include a include a much broader scope of lesser crimes, and to grow the federal government's power to prosecute these lesser crimes that it includes in its new definition.

Lynching is not a problem in the United States anymore, and the language of the act affirms that fact unequivocally. The act cites that at least "4,742 people, predominantly black African-Americans, were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968."

The act then goes on to describe efforts by Congress before 1968 to "end lynching," and it also references its efforts since 1968 to "apologize to the victims of lynching and their descendants." But never once does the initial "findings" section of the act suggest that acts of lynching are still prevalent, therefore requiring new powers or correction today, because no data as to lynching in America are provided beyond the year of 1968.
These numbers cited appear to have been drawn from a study by the Tuskegee Institute, which defines lynching thusly: "There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race or tradition."

So even in the definition used by the only study that the act cites, there is admission that "lynching" is not defined explicitly as a race-related crime. That same study finds that nearly 1,300 whites were lynched in that same timeframe who likely weren't murdered because they were white.

Consider the lynching of the notorious Ruggles brothers. In May of 1892, brothers John and Charles Ruggles were captured after robbing a stagecoach in Northern California. While they were imprisoned in Redding, California, it had become apparent that the two young outlaws were quite the hit with the ladies around town, who brought the men flowers, cakes, and "even offers of marriage." That didn't sit too well with other men around town, so four days before their official trial, a group of masked men grabbed them from their cell in Redding and hanged them from a derrick without trial.

That is a perfectly fitting example of a lynching, albeit not one that most would conjure when hearing the word. The point is, the word has always had a specific, practical meaning, and it is nothing like the one Senate Democrats are presenting.

Here's something interesting to consider. The alleged attack against Jussie Smollett would certainly not, in the commonly understood definition throughout history, be considered a "lynching." But it would fit the definition of a "lynching" in the Democrats' newly proposed law.


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