When Whites Riot: Writing Race and Violence in American and South African Culture

by Sheila Smith McKoy

In a bold work that cuts across racial, ethnic, cultural, and national boundaries, Sheila Smith McKoy reveals how race colors the idea of violence in the United States and in South Africa—two countries inevitably and inextricably linked by the central role of skin color in personal and national identity.
    Although race riots are usually seen as black events in both the United States and South Africa, they have played a significant role in shaping the concept of whiteness and white power in both nations. This emerges clearly from Smith McKoy's examination of four riots that demonstrate the relationship between the two nations and the apartheid practices that have historically defined North Carolina's Wilmington Race Riot of 1898; the Soweto Uprising of 1976; the Los Angeles Rebellion in 1992; and the pre-election riot in Mmabatho, Bhoputhatswana in 1994. Pursuing these events through narratives, media reports, and film, Smith McKoy shows how white racial violence has been disguised by race riots in the political and power structures of both the United States and South Africa.
    The first transnational study to probe the abiding inclination to "blacken" riots, When Whites Riot unravels the connection between racial violence—both the white and the "raced"—in the United States and South Africa, as well as the social dynamics that this connection sustains.

Genres: Race, Africa

170 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2001

Reviews

[CTEP]

Over the summer, Interfaith Outreach has taken seriously its goal of providing common language and shared understanding of cultural competence by providing mandatory diversity and inclusion trainings for all staff. That common language of culture, race, class, bias, and more, is crucial for us to communicate consistently and accurately about our own stories, the stories of others, and situations that arise both at my site and in the community around us. Language, I am learning, is critically important to framing issues, and those who create the language control the dialogue. In When Whites Riot, the primacy of language is paramount, as hegemonic terminology is revealed as a means of dehumanization.

When Whites Riot is a comparative study of racialized violence that occurred in two different countries nearly a century apart, but that were instigated and framed by very similar biases, hatreds, and communities. I will discuss one of them in this reflection. The first violence discussed, the 1898 Wilmington riot in North Carolina, introduces the topic of “ululation,” or verbal rallying to create polarized conditions from which violence can spring. The antebellum South was ripe with polarized narratives and realities. On one side, white former slave owners controlled government, commerce, and media, and viewed any entrance of Black people into full personhood in their society as a threat. On the other, Black Americans were disenfranchised and lacked material resources, but they had vibrant resources in their communities, including parallel media publications and Black-owned businesses. The dominant white culture framed this divide as both natural and barbaric, and published a variety of articles in local newspapers framing local disturbances as an outcome of allowing fearsome, superhuman Black bodies to occupy space with white folks. Eventually, a Black newspaper editor spoke out in a high-profile way, and published an editorial in his own publication reframing the narrative and insisting on the realness and personhood of Black men. Unfortunately, this reframe and reclamation of language was turned on its head and used by the whites in Wilmington as evidence that Blacks were becoming too uncontrollable, and they published counter-articles that eventually convinced mobs to burn down the last Black-owned newspaper in the town, and frame Black Americans’ resulting self-defense as a race riot. When the 1898 Wilmington riot is discussed in history books to this day, the words “race riot” remain, along with its connotations of color, although the instigators of the violence were exclusively white. Those who create the language control the dialogue.

A similar riot that occurred in South Africa in the 1970s is studied as evidence that this manipulation of language and the press is a frequently used, violent tool in the hands of the powerful. Unfortunately, I am bombarded with reminders of this manipulation happening even today, in the era of phrases like “fake news” and “illegal immigrants” and “good guy with a gun.” Violence manifested in separation of families on the border and police shootings of Black Americans is a large-scale continuation of white riot in this century. And on a smaller scale, antagonists at nonviolent protests are often framed by the media as equally moral as protestors themselves, which legitimizes violent provocation.

This control of language has been on my mind, not just in the national playing field, but at my site. Language is essential to the people we serve—are they “clients,” “students,” or “job-seekers?” is our antiseptic language dehumanizing them?—and how we, in power, at a nonprofit, frame their stories can effect the type of care and services we provide them. Even something as simple as mentally holding someone’s identity as “so-and-so’s wife” can implicitly place their value in their connection to another person and not allow their value to be intrinsic. Or assuming physical hardiness from a Black woman or masculine-presenting person may undermine efforts to consider physical challenges when they are job searching.

Language is tricky, and sometimes, exposing oneself to alternative language is the only to allow the possibility for change. When Whites Riot, in both of the instances of violence it expounds, includes literary analyses of novels written by Black authors who survived these experiences. Reading the language they used about themselves and their contexts tells a very different story than that told by the occupiers. In issues of justice, this is key. As a member of the dominant culture, what I can do best is listen to the language those I serve use about themselves and their stories, and be mindful of when I project my biases onto their situations. Really, that’s the least any of us can do to respect the personhoods of the humans beside us.