One extremely striking theme surfaced for me during the broadcast of Freedom Riders on PBS.
It was the constant refrain of whites who attacked, beat, and intimidated Freedom Riders. They slashed the tires of the buses, set the buses on fire, arrested the Riders on false charges, or---in the case of officials and police officers----stood aside, turned their backs, and either let it happen, or actively colluded with the attackers.
"They came here lookin' for trouble."
Yet the Freedom Riders did nothing but peacefully buy their tickets, sit politely next to other people, and not fight back. In short, all the violent events were committed by racist whites. Yet it's not just racists who use this accusation. It's a popular accusation with any number of bullies, and it's time to dissect this.
"They were looking for trouble." (Sometimes a smug addition is added. "Well, we gave it to them.")
"She asked for it (trouble/implied sexual assault, etc., etc.,)"
"Look what you made me do."
I'm sure you can think of many many other variations of this theme.
In Freedom Riders--which was broadcast last night on PBS--the Riders came peacefully in various locations on Greyhound and Trailways buses, after legally buying their tickets and---apparently----pressing their suits and dresses, to judge by the fact that many of them were apparently wearing their Sunday best. All of them were neatly, respectably dressed. The women wore dresses or skirts and blouses, buttoned to the neck, and the men wore either suits and ties or neat shirts and pants. And they were greeted with stunning amounts of violence the deeper into the South that they traveled.
In one city, someone threw a Molotov cocktail and set the bus on fire, forcing the Riders to leave the relative safety of the bus for the gauntlet waiting outside. The whites waiting for them beat them with iron pipes, crowbars, fists, bricks, rocks, and anything they could get their hands on. This was observed by police officers, who in one instance herded off the attackers without making a single arrest, saying, "You had your fun." They witnessed these attacks with their own eyes. In many cases they either participated or turned their backs. They could very likely identify these mobs, because these were likely towns they'd lived in their whole life. They did not.
Fun. Fun. To these people, it was fun. And I'm not being sarcastic. I think for some of them it really was. After all, fun often involves actions that would be violent if they were directed at human beings----swinging a bat, for example. Or punching a punching bag. Kicking a ball. These were all methods of attack employed against the Freedom Riders.
The racists in the south did not regard black people as human, and the white people who aided them were considered to be worse than traitors. In order to hold black people as slaves and then in a condition of servitude that was little better than slavery, racists had to tell themselves that their victims deserved it, were no better than it. After a while, the thought became habit, the habit became fact, and the fact became the foundation of their way of thinking. Their identity was never questioned. The African American quest for rights went after their foundation of their world with a jackhammer, but it had been such an unquestioned way of life for so long that it must have felt more like an earthquake.
That describes the scene. This is what the whites blamed on the Freedom Riders. The blood, the broken bones, the injuries----to the racists' way of thinking, the Freedom Riders deserved all that. It's important to note that the Riders did not offer any resistance, were trained to not to strike back, and were sitting ducks. They could not defend themselves in the slightest because it would be regarded ---meaning lied about---as fighting back.
However, it had to be done this way. Nothing else could win this war. If there had been the slightest bit of resistance, it would have been inflated to the modern-day equivalent of the slave uprisings that slave owners of the past feared so much. Why would they fear such revolts if their description of that peculiar institution was true---that it was benevolent, beneficial for all concerned, and gave black people employment and shelter? (And yes, these are the terms they used. Some variations on these themes may be heard from racist whites if they don't know they're being overheard.) It amounts, in fact, to an admission that they know exactly how bad what they were doing really was. The guilty flee where no man pursueth, says the Bible. Reading over and over how white men feared 'race mixing' and other things indicates very clearly that they feared, very obviously, a taste of their own medicine.
"They came lookin' for trouble." (With many smug additions, too; "Well, they got it, didn't they?")
The implication is that 'trouble' is inevitable, that 'trouble' is practically a location, a thing--- that the true offenders were the Riders, not the people who attacked them. The Freedom Riders were troublemakers, by this definition, which is used in this way to refer not to people who are on the business end of the tire end----but to their victim. 'Trouble' is daring to suggest that society can be changed on behalf of people whom society values the least, because after all, goes the defensive whining---you just can't put all those white people in jail, can you? YOu'd have to build more jails. (One hears this kind of thinking, for example, in discussions about rape, too, when the idea that rape victims rather than rapists be the ones to define rape comes up.) This is called normalizing.
The 'trouble', to anyone speaking this line, is regarded as right, just, inevitable. It's regarded as defensive. The actions of the Riders, therefore, must be regarded as offensive. To understand this way of thinking, one must ask what were the Riders supposedly attacking by not being violent toward anyone or anything at all? By not attacking anything in any fashion whatsoever?
The system of living in the South---and to a lesser degree in the North---was that no black person had rights that had to be respected by any white person. Any white person had only to make up some excuse and the black person's rights could effectively be taken away. What white people felt was under attack was their complete and total control of the rights of black people to exist. They would still effectively control everything else---they'd long held black people in artificial poverty for generations---but it marked the very beginning of the beginning and they knew it. What whites were defending was their power to control the world and the things in it. Black people were simply things to racists. What white people felt they were defending were their rights----to dole out rights to black people, who were considered uppity if they so much as asked.
What black people were saying was that they had rights that had been granted to them at birth, by citizenship, by their inarguable status as human beings, that could not and should be legally infringed upon by any other human being. They were saying that they were equal to white people---neither superior, nor inferior, but simply on a par, that all human beings were created equal, however social conditions kept one group in subjugation to another, however dark one person's skin color was, however light another's was. All of that was just details. Picking simple things like lunch counters and water fountains and bus rides was such an audacious act of genius that it is awe inspiring. Who on earth could find a person's desire to such simple every day things offensive? "They came lookin' for trouble."
When someone uses this type of language to refer to someone they've just victimized or are threatening to victimize----it's very popular with rapist apologists and with wife beaters------one has to remember to ask yourself, who exactly got injured here? Moving on to other variations of stating this belief system, saying that 'she asked for it' is saying that 'it' is something that she deserves, something unpleasant, a punishment, for daring to do something so unreasonable. Talking about rape reveals that many people regard it as deeply and profoundly offensive for women to walk around, not in skimpy clothes, but as if they don't care what men think about them or their clothing, as if they are not afraid of men at all. One almost amusing thing about those discussions is how the people who defend this type of thinking often wind up arguing, basically, that men who rape are so common that no woman can be safe anywhere, yet if you dare suggest that this means that rapists are everywhere, they get offended. Likewise, wife-beaters repeatedly say, "Look what you made me do." What they are made to do, of course, is never anything beneficial or kind, which is odd, because you would think that if one is going to make another person do anything, it would be along the lines of helping with the housework, watching the kids, rubbing one's feet, etc.,etc., etc., No, the wife beater doesn't want to beat his wife or girlfriend into a pulp, break her arms, burn her face, cause her to miscarry, break her ribs, cause internal injuries---but because she mislaid his socks, didn't get the laundry folded, or didn't finish dinner he had to inflict that upon her. Notice how he doesn't want to, but he has to. (I could go on here but I think it's important enough for another topic.)
Yet each one of these claims depends upon the notion that the victim's actions are so offensive, so threatening, so horrible, that it is understandable for the attacker to respond with extreme violence, with rape, or with a beating. The victims are sometimes understood to be manipulative, to be 'pretending' to be victims so that the attacker can then be forced into attacking them. The victim thus becomes the provocateur, the attacker the helpless victim, goaded beyond endurance. If the victim is not someone who enjoys social status equivalent to that of the attacker, then it's easy to position them as someone attempting to tarnish the attacker and somehow seize some benefits from the attacker's higher social position, perhaps. The notion that poor people---women especially---are determined to gold dig their way to riches sometimes lurks beneath these myths, but rich people get off for crimes that would result in swift convictions were they lower on the social ladder. Or even people who are merely valued, in some way. Would anybody have believed the story of, say, Jeffrey MacDonald on the merits had he been anybody but a golden-haired American boy? The notion that people of lower status are constantly seeking to bring down the rich or the famous is another peculiar myth that dominates the American subconscious. Ah, yes, another tangent. Sorry.
The crimes against the Freedom Riders fit this pattern, but were easy to recognize and condemn because of the sheer scale of them. When this tactic is employed between individuals, it's very important to place it in a wider context so that the pattern becomes clear. It's very easy to get caught up in the framing and go along with it, rather than analyze it.
And analysis is key. In every case, the supposed provocateur is doing nothing that is threatening, dangerous, or harmful to the attacker. That is the thing to focus on when arguing against this type of reasoning. This is nothing but a bully's lament, because just attacking someone is not enough for them. They must wave the bloody shirt of victimization, even if it was they that did the victimizing---and it's the blood of their own victim staining the shirt. They were provoked! They cry. That person came looking for trouble! They say.
And yet, it's never them who gets hurt.