Timothy Caughmans Murder Was a Lynching

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/03/timothy_caughman_s_murder_was_a_lynching_in_trump_s_america.html

Timothy Caughman’s Murder Was a Lynching
And Donald Trump has said nothing.
By Jamelle Bouie


A man was lynched this week.

Timothy Caughman, 66, was a former social worker who, in his retirement years, had taken to recycling to keep busy and help pay for his apartment, a room in a building for people transitioning from homelessness to permanent housing (a longtime tenant, he was not homeless himself). Caughman was black, which made him a target for his professed killer, James Harris Jackson, 28, of Baltimore.

By his own account, Jackson hated black men. “I’ve hated black men since I was a kid. I’ve had these feelings since I was a young person. I hate black men,” he reportedly told police. And armed with a sword and several knives, he traveled to New York City to kill them. On Monday, according to a police account from the New York Times, Jackson confronted Caughman—who was sifting through trash for recyclables—and stabbed him. He then tossed his sword in a nearby garbage can and went to a restaurant restroom to wash away the blood.

There’s nothing ambiguous here. Jackson says he targeted a black man for death to make a statement about the kind of society he wants to have. Once finished with his task, he turned himself in to police.

Prosecutors say this was a hate crime and “most likely an act of terrorism.” We should also think of it as a lynching, the latest episode in an American form of racial violence that stretches back to the 19th century. Jackson’s professed crime has all the hallmarks of the lynchings that scarred the American landscape from the close of the 19th century to middle of the 20th. This isn’t a semantic point. To describe this attack as a lynching is to emphasize the reality of anti-black violence, its persistence through time, and the way in which it’s justified.

snip//

Our current president, Donald Trump, has yet to comment on Caughman’s murder, issue condolences to his family, or condemn this act of white supremacist terror. He did have time, however, to send a message to an American victim of terrorism in London. Trump’s indifference to victims of racist violence isn’t new; Trump never condemned a January shooting at a Québec mosque that took six lives (he managed, however, to comment on an attempted stabbing in Paris), and it took him a week to condemn the killing of an Indian computer engineer in Kansas. If past behavior tells us anything about future performance, we should expect similar silence from Trump on Caughman, even as law enforcement treats his killer as a terrorist.

By understanding Caughman’s murder as a lynching, we gain clarity into how racial violence is more than hate—how it’s meant to enforce racial caste by making an example of violators, or anyone who might be a violator. And in turn, we can use today’s context to help understand the past and gain insight into how it felt for black Americans at the time. To call Jackson’s professed attack an act of terrorism is also to recontextualize the age of lynching as an earlier age of terrorism, forgotten by most, but whose scars still linger in the memory of black America.

A man was lynched this week, far from the first, and given the rising tide of racial violence, certainly not the last.

[MrScorpio]

1. I see the truth

[Throck]

2. You assume Trump can read the papers.

[Lucky Luciano]

3. I didn't think lynching because I always imagine them as hangings.

But that is exactly what this was. A lynching.

[Stryst]

7. Right? But that's the struggle

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the 80's. Lynchings were just... not something I was aware of. Then, in high school social studies, we talked about lynchings in regard to the post reconstruction era and the battles for civil rights in the 60's. But the imagery was always of hangings.

[WhiteTara]

4. ...

As a species, it seems we have no humanity left.

[maveric]

5. He was from Baltimore and had to go to NYC...

to find black men to kill?

[Scarsdale]

8. Exactly

I wondered about that myself. Why choose a man who obviously was struggling in life? Easy target for this coward.

[Lucky Luciano]

11. I think he chose New York because he wanted to do it in the media capital of the US/world. nt

[IronLionZion]

13. Because it would get more media exposure

Baltimore would not have made as many headlines as NYC.

The asshole who shot 2 cops 2 years ago also came from Baltimore up to NYC to do a random killing.

[heaven05]

6. +++

and given the evil that 'presidents' bannon, miller and chump have released from true civil and social restraint, this IS going to be the first of many 'long hot summers'.

I would be surprised IF chump would make a statement on this lynching and if so, it would be purely political dressing with no real empathy or compassion behind the reason of statement release.

This chump is the laughing stock of the world now and by association, all the rest of us...with presidents like the terrible triumvirate, who needs enemies? And the terrible triumvirate is the enemy of AA, women, immigrants, muslims and all other minorities not white, kkkhristian and male/female and the army of brownshirts they have released will be trying to prove bannons hate.

[Cha]

9. ...

[SticksnStones]

10. Times like these I wish Obama WAS running a shadow presidency

We are a country with no moral leader; no call out or comfort comes from this White House.

[Jonny Appleseed]

12. Now if it was a beheading by a muslim...

Troops would be on the ground in NYC. Trump would declare martial law. He wants a Reichstag fire so badly.

[Pinkflamingo]

14. This racist needs to go back to Baltimore and get a "rough ride" in a Baltimore Police paddy wagon

[yuiyoshida]

15. Fuckers

n/t