Read The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined Online
Authors: Steven Pinker
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The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (86 page)
The prohibition of dodgeball represents the overshooting of yet another successful campaign against violence, the century-long movement to prevent the abuse and neglect of children. It reminds us of how a civilizing offensive can leave a culture with a legacy of puzzling customs, peccadilloes, and taboos. The code of etiquette bequeathed by this and the other Rights Revolutions is pervasive enough to have acquired a name. We call it political correctness.
The Rights Revolutions have another curious legacy. Because they are propelled by an escalating sensitivity to new forms of harm, they erase their own tracks and leave us amnesic about their successes. As we shall see, the revolutions have brought us measurable and substantial declines in many categories of violence. But many people resist acknowledging the victories, partly out of ignorance of the statistics, partly because of a mission creep that encourages activists to keep up the pressure by denying that progress has been made. The racial oppression that inspired the first generations of the civil rights movement was played out in lynchings, night raids, antiblack pogroms, and physical intimidation at the ballot box. In a typical battle of today, it may consist of African American drivers being pulled over more often on the highways. (When Clarence Thomas described his successful but contentious 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing as a “high-tech lynching,” it was the epitome of tastelessness but also a sign of how far we have come.) The oppression of women used to include laws that allowed husbands to rape, beat, and confine their wives; today it is applied to elite universities whose engineering departments do not have a fifty-fifty ratio of male and female professors. The battle for gay rights has progressed from repealing laws that execute, mutilate, or imprison homosexual men to repealing laws that define marriage as a contract between a man and a woman. None of this means we should be satisfied with the status quo or disparage the efforts to combat remaining discrimination and mistreatment. It’s just to remind us that the first goal of any rights movement is to protect its beneficiaries from being assaulted or killed. These victories, even if partial, are moments we should acknowledge, savor, and seek to understand.
CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE DECLINE OF LYNCHING AND RACIAL POGROMSWhen most people think of the American civil rights movement, they recall a twenty-year run of newsworthy events. It began in 1948, when Harry Truman ended segregation in the U.S. armed forces; accelerated through the 1950s, when the Supreme Court banned segregated schools, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, and Martin Luther King organized a boycott in response; climaxed in the early 1960s, when two hundred thousand people marched on Washington and heard King give perhaps the greatest speech in history; and culminated with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968.
Yet these triumphs were presaged by quieter but no less important ones. King began his 1963 speech by noting, “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we now stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation . . . a great beacon-light of hope to millions of negro slaves.” Yet “one hundred years later, the negro still is not free.” The reason that African Americans did not exercise their rights in the intervening century was that they were intimidated by the threat of violence. Not only did the government use force in administering segregation and discriminatory laws, but African Americans were kept in their place by the category of violence called intercommunal conflict
,
in which one group of citizens—defined by race, tribe, religion, or language—targets another. In many parts of the United States, African American families were terrorized by organized thugs such as the Ku Klux Klan. And in thousands of incidents, a mob would publicly torture and execute an individual—a lynching—or visit an orgy of vandalism and murder on a community—a racial pogrom, also called a deadly ethnic riot.
,
in which one group of citizens—defined by race, tribe, religion, or language—targets another. In many parts of the United States, African American families were terrorized by organized thugs such as the Ku Klux Klan. And in thousands of incidents, a mob would publicly torture and execute an individual—a lynching—or visit an orgy of vandalism and murder on a community—a racial pogrom, also called a deadly ethnic riot.
In his definitive book on the deadly ethnic riot, the political scientist Donald Horowitz studied reports of 150 episodes of this form of intercommunal violence spanning fifty countries and laid out their common features.
3
An ethnic riot combines aspects of genocide and terrorism with features of its own. Unlike these two other forms of collective violence, it is not planned, has no articulated ideology, and is not masterminded by a leader or implemented by a government or militia, though it does depend on the government sympathizing with the perpetrators and looking the other way. Its psychological roots, though, are the same as those of genocide. One group essentializes the members of another and deems them less than human, inherently evil, or both. A mob forms and strikes against its target, either preemptively, in response to the Hobbesian fear of being targeted first, or retributively, in revenge for a dastardly crime. The inciting threat or crime is typically rumored, embellished, or invented out of whole cloth. The rioters are consumed by their hatred and strike with demonic fury. They burn and destroy assets rather than plundering them, and they kill, rape, torture, and mutilate members of the despised group at random rather than seeking the alleged wrongdoers. Usually they go after their victims with bladed weapons and other hands-on armaments rather than with firearms. The perpetrators (mostly young men, of course) carry out their atrocities in a euphoric frenzy and afterward feel no remorse for what they see as a justifiable response to an intolerable provocation. An ethnic riot doesn’t destroy the targeted group, but it kills far greater numbers than terrorism; the death toll averages around a dozen but can range into the hundreds, the thousands, or (as in the nationwide rioting after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947) the hundreds of thousands. Deadly ethnic riots can be an effective means of ethnic cleansing, sending millions of refugees from their homes in fear of their lives. And like terrorism, deadly riots can exact enormous costs in money and fear, leading to martial law, the abrogation of democracy, coups d’état, and secessionist warfare.
4
3
An ethnic riot combines aspects of genocide and terrorism with features of its own. Unlike these two other forms of collective violence, it is not planned, has no articulated ideology, and is not masterminded by a leader or implemented by a government or militia, though it does depend on the government sympathizing with the perpetrators and looking the other way. Its psychological roots, though, are the same as those of genocide. One group essentializes the members of another and deems them less than human, inherently evil, or both. A mob forms and strikes against its target, either preemptively, in response to the Hobbesian fear of being targeted first, or retributively, in revenge for a dastardly crime. The inciting threat or crime is typically rumored, embellished, or invented out of whole cloth. The rioters are consumed by their hatred and strike with demonic fury. They burn and destroy assets rather than plundering them, and they kill, rape, torture, and mutilate members of the despised group at random rather than seeking the alleged wrongdoers. Usually they go after their victims with bladed weapons and other hands-on armaments rather than with firearms. The perpetrators (mostly young men, of course) carry out their atrocities in a euphoric frenzy and afterward feel no remorse for what they see as a justifiable response to an intolerable provocation. An ethnic riot doesn’t destroy the targeted group, but it kills far greater numbers than terrorism; the death toll averages around a dozen but can range into the hundreds, the thousands, or (as in the nationwide rioting after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947) the hundreds of thousands. Deadly ethnic riots can be an effective means of ethnic cleansing, sending millions of refugees from their homes in fear of their lives. And like terrorism, deadly riots can exact enormous costs in money and fear, leading to martial law, the abrogation of democracy, coups d’état, and secessionist warfare.
4
Deadly ethnic riots are by no means an innovation of the 20th century.
Pogrom
is a Russian word that was applied to the frequent anti-Jewish riots in the 19th-century Pale of Settlement, which were just the latest wave in a millennium of intercommunal killings of Jews in Europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries England was swept by hundreds of deadly riots targeting Catholics. One response was a piece of legislation that a magistrate would publicly recite to a mob threatening them with execution if they did not immediately disperse. We remember this crowd-control measure in the expression
to read them the Riot Act
.
5
Pogrom
is a Russian word that was applied to the frequent anti-Jewish riots in the 19th-century Pale of Settlement, which were just the latest wave in a millennium of intercommunal killings of Jews in Europe. In the 17th and 18th centuries England was swept by hundreds of deadly riots targeting Catholics. One response was a piece of legislation that a magistrate would publicly recite to a mob threatening them with execution if they did not immediately disperse. We remember this crowd-control measure in the expression
to read them the Riot Act
.
5
The United States also has a long history of intercommunal violence. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries just about every religious group came under assault in deadly riots, including Pilgrims, Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Mormons, and Jews, together with immigrant communities such as Germans, Poles, Italians, Irish, and Chinese.
6
And as we saw in chapter 6, intercommunal violence against some Native American peoples was so complete that it can be placed in the category of genocide. Though the federal government did not perpetrate any overt genocides, it carried out several ethnic cleansings. The forced expulsion of “five civilized tribes” along the Trail of Tears from their southeastern homelands to present-day Oklahoma resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands from disease, hunger, and exposure. As recently as the 1940s, a hundred thousand Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps because they were of the same race as the nation the country was fighting.
6
And as we saw in chapter 6, intercommunal violence against some Native American peoples was so complete that it can be placed in the category of genocide. Though the federal government did not perpetrate any overt genocides, it carried out several ethnic cleansings. The forced expulsion of “five civilized tribes” along the Trail of Tears from their southeastern homelands to present-day Oklahoma resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands from disease, hunger, and exposure. As recently as the 1940s, a hundred thousand Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps because they were of the same race as the nation the country was fighting.
But the longest-running victims of intercommunal and government-indulged violence were African Americans.
7
Though we tend to think of lynching as a phenomenon of the American South, two of the most atrocious incidents took place in New York City: a 1741 rampage following rumors of a slave revolt in which many African Americans were burned at the stake, and the 1863 draft riots (depicted in the 2002 film
Gangs of New York
) in which at least fifty were lynched. In some years in the postbellum South, thousands of African Americans were killed, and the early 20th century saw race riots killing dozens at a time in more than twenty-five cites.
8
7
Though we tend to think of lynching as a phenomenon of the American South, two of the most atrocious incidents took place in New York City: a 1741 rampage following rumors of a slave revolt in which many African Americans were burned at the stake, and the 1863 draft riots (depicted in the 2002 film
Gangs of New York
) in which at least fifty were lynched. In some years in the postbellum South, thousands of African Americans were killed, and the early 20th century saw race riots killing dozens at a time in more than twenty-five cites.
8
Rioting of all kinds began to decrease in Europe in the mid-19th century. In the United States deadly rioting began to diminish at the century’s end, and by the 1920s it had entered a terminal decline.
9
Using figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, James Payne tabulated the number of lynchings beginning in 1882 and found that they fell precipitously from 1890 to the 1940s (figure 7–2). During these decades, horrific lynchings continued to make the news, and shocking photographs of hanged and burned corpses were published in newspapers and circulated among activists, particularly the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A 1930 photograph of a pair of men hanged in Indiana inspired a schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol to write a poem in protest:
9
Using figures from the U.S. Census Bureau, James Payne tabulated the number of lynchings beginning in 1882 and found that they fell precipitously from 1890 to the 1940s (figure 7–2). During these decades, horrific lynchings continued to make the news, and shocking photographs of hanged and burned corpses were published in newspapers and circulated among activists, particularly the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A 1930 photograph of a pair of men hanged in Indiana inspired a schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol to write a poem in protest:
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
FIGURE 7–2.
Lynchings in the United States, 1882–1969
Lynchings in the United States, 1882–1969
Source:
Graph from Payne, 2004, p. 182.
Graph from Payne, 2004, p. 182.
(Meeropol and his wife, Anne, would later adopt the orphaned sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, after the couple had been executed for Julius’s passing of nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union.) When Meeropol put the poem to music, it became the signature tune of Billie Holiday, and in 1999
Time
magazine called it the song of the century.
10
Yet in one of those paradoxes of timing that we have often stumbled upon, the conspicuous protest emerged at a time when the crime had already long been in decline. The last famous lynching case came to light in 1955, when fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, beaten, mutilated, and killed in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman. His murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury in a perfunctory trial.
Time
magazine called it the song of the century.
10
Yet in one of those paradoxes of timing that we have often stumbled upon, the conspicuous protest emerged at a time when the crime had already long been in decline. The last famous lynching case came to light in 1955, when fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped, beaten, mutilated, and killed in Mississippi after allegedly whistling at a white woman. His murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury in a perfunctory trial.
Fears of a renewal of lynching were raised in the late 1990s, when a vicious murder stunned the nation. In 1998 three racists in Texas abducted an African American man, James Byrd, Jr., beat him senseless, chained him by the ankles to their pickup truck, and dragged him along the pavement for three miles until his body hit a culvert and was torn to pieces. Though the clandestine murder was very different from the lynchings of a century before, in which an entire community would execute a black person in a carnival atmosphere, the word
lynching
was widely applied to the crime. The murder took place a few years after the FBI had begun to gather statistics on so-called hate crimes, namely acts of violence that target a person because of race, religion, or sexual orientation. Since 1996 the FBI has published these statistics in annual reports, allowing us to see whether the Byrd murder was part of a disturbing new trend.
11
Figure 7–3 shows the number of African Americans who were murdered because of their race during the past dozen years. The numbers on the vertical axis do not represent homicides per 100,000 people; they represent the
absolute number
of homicides. Five African Americans were murdered because of their race in 1996, the first year in which records were published, and the number has since gone down to one per year. In a country with 17,000 murders a year, hate-crime murders have fallen into the statistical noise.
lynching
was widely applied to the crime. The murder took place a few years after the FBI had begun to gather statistics on so-called hate crimes, namely acts of violence that target a person because of race, religion, or sexual orientation. Since 1996 the FBI has published these statistics in annual reports, allowing us to see whether the Byrd murder was part of a disturbing new trend.
11
Figure 7–3 shows the number of African Americans who were murdered because of their race during the past dozen years. The numbers on the vertical axis do not represent homicides per 100,000 people; they represent the
absolute number
of homicides. Five African Americans were murdered because of their race in 1996, the first year in which records were published, and the number has since gone down to one per year. In a country with 17,000 murders a year, hate-crime murders have fallen into the statistical noise.
Far more common, of course, are the less serious forms of violence, such as aggravated assault (in which the assailant uses a weapon or causes an injury), simple assault, and intimidation (in which the victim is made to feel in danger for his or her personal safety). Though the absolute numbers of racially motivated incidents are alarming—several hundred assaults, several hundred aggravated assaults, and a thousand acts of intimidation a year—they have to be put in the context of American crime numbers during much of that period, which included a
million
aggravated assaults per year. The rate of racially motivated aggravated assaults was about one-half of 1 percent of the rate of all aggravated assaults (322 per 100,000 people per year), and less than the rate that a person of any race would be murdered for any reason. And as figure 7–4 shows, since 1996 all three kinds of hate crime have been in decline.
million
aggravated assaults per year. The rate of racially motivated aggravated assaults was about one-half of 1 percent of the rate of all aggravated assaults (322 per 100,000 people per year), and less than the rate that a person of any race would be murdered for any reason. And as figure 7–4 shows, since 1996 all three kinds of hate crime have been in decline.
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