Lynching did not improve white women’s lives one iota, but lying to oneself about the real source of one’s vulnerability can be an attractive panacea. A woman swallows her own conspiracist and pseudoscientific bullshit about Black men’s savage lasciviousness, even though it bears no or little resemblance to her lived experience or empirical reality, because it’s easier than indicting her own husband, uncle, priest, dad, or the family form itself.
