THIS IS PROGRESS

"If black women were raped in slavery it was because they were licentious and seductive, or so white men told themselves. If white men had an unusual obsession with black male genitalia it was because they had to understand the sexual primitive, the demonic beast in their midst. And if during lynching they touched burnt flesh, exposed private parts, and cut off bits and pieces of black male bodies, white folks saw this ritualistic sacrifice in no way a commentary on their obsession with black bodies, naked flesh, sexuality. (It is useful to remember the lynching of black folks escalated when slavery ended.) So much ritual sexualized torture of the black body indicates the intensity of both white hatred of black bodies and their longing to consume those bodies in a symbolic sexualized cannibalism."