Are Slate and Amanda Hess arguing for lynching?, Free Northerner impishly asks, because that’s what that “Hollaback” video suggests:
The target audience of Slate is middle-class white liberals with humanities degrees. These are not the type of people harassing the woman in the video. There is no point lecturing Slate readers on stopping harassment because Slate readers are not the ones harassing.
So, there seems to be no point to this article. Slate readers aren’t the ones doing the harassing and it’s not likely lower-class blacks will care about the moral protestations of middle-class white feminists.
The only reason I can think of to write this is to encourage white males to forcibly stop black men from harassing them. something which reminds me of the days when looking wrongly at a white woman was a lynching offence. It seems to me that Amanda Hess and Slate just inadvertently argued for society to resume lynching uppity blacks, or at least segregation to keep them off the streets white women might use. I think everybody involved needs to check their privilege.
Anyway, if you wish to donate to a campaign to stop uppity blacks from talking to white women, you can donate to Hollaback here.
Lynching a negro for looking at a white woman was a very rare instance I might think. You had about the same chance of being lynched for such an “offense” as being hit by lightning fifty or so times and surviving.
I suspect that immediate-death-by-mob serves as enough of a deterrent to reduce the need for follow-through.