Conveniently enough, white men didn’t begin to propagate the myth of Black male rapists until after the Civil War. During the war, when they left their wives and daughters on plantations with these same Black men, there were few to no accusations of sexual assault. But after the war, suddenly (we are to believe), white men’s outsized outrage and paranoia over the safety of white women was about actual crimes Black men were committing rather than about white men’s deep and unbridled rage over losing power.
