Many important things will be said in the next few weeks about the murder of nine people holding a prayer meeting at a predominantly African American church yesterday. Assuming that Dylann Roof is the murderer and that he made the proclamation being quoted in the media, I want to say: “I am a white woman. No more murder in my name.”<\/p>\n
Before gunning down a room full of black worshippers, Roof reportedly said<\/a>:<\/p>\n I have to do it. You rape our women and you\u2019re taking over our country. And you have to go.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For my two cents, I want to suggest\u00a0that Roof’s alleged act was motivated by racism, first and foremost, but also sexism. In particular, a phenomenon called\u00a0benevolent sexism<\/em>.<\/p>\n Sociologists use the term to describe the\u00a0attribution of positive traits to women that, nonetheless, justify their\u00a0subordination to men. For example, women may be\u00a0described as good with people, but this is believed to make them perform poorly in competitive arenas like work, sports, or politics. Better that they leave that to the men.\u00a0Women are wonderful with children, they say, but this is used to suggest that they should take primary responsibility for\u00a0unpaid, undervalued domestic work. Better that\u00a0they let men support them.<\/p>\n And, the one that Roof used to rationalize his racist act was: Women are beautiful, but their grace makes them fragile. Better that they stand back and let men defend them.\u00a0This argument is hundreds of years old, of course. It’s most clearly articulated in the history of lynching<\/a> in which black men were routinely violently murdered by white mobs using the excuse that they raped a white woman.<\/p>\n I stand with Jessie\u00a0Daniel Ames and her\u00a0“revolt against chivalry<\/a>” in the 1920s and ’30s.\u00a0Ames was one of the first\u00a0white women to speak out against lynching, arguing that\u00a0its rationale was sexist as well as racist. Roof is the modern equivalent of this white mob. He believes that he and other white men own me and women like me — “you rape our<\/em> women,” he said possessively — and so he justified gunning down innocent black people on my behalf. You are vulnerable, he’s whispering to me, let me protect you.<\/p>\n All oppression is interconnected. The matrix of domination must come down.\u00a0I am a white woman. No more murder in my name.<\/p>\n This essay was expanded for The Conversation<\/a> and cross-posted at the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Many important things will be said in the next few weeks about the murder of nine people holding a prayer meeting at a predominantly African American church yesterday. Assuming that Dylann Roof is the murderer and that he made the proclamation being quoted in the media, I want to say: “I am a white woman. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67224,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,2096,2095,2102,2087,2090,253,778,283,285,1760,23665,20063,1757,133],"class_list":["post-67226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-gender-femininity","tag-gender-feminismactivism","tag-gender-history","tag-gender-masculinity","tag-gender-violence","tag-history","tag-intersectionality","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-history","tag-raceethnicity-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2015\/06\/25.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67226"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67270,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67226\/revisions\/67270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}