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RACISM
Why Some See Successful Black People as an Existential Threat
The success of Black people violates racist presumptions
To some White people, the very image of successful Black people is threatening. Confronted with their blossoming human potential, the stereotypes that characterize Black people as lazy, violent, ignorant, and uncivilized are stripped of their power. Rather than confront this cognitive dissonance, some stand as gatekeepers, blocking access to opportunities. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his memoir, The Message, "It may seem strange that people who already attained a position of power through violence invest so much time justifying their plunder with words." And yet, "a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves and those they seek to throttle and rob." Simply put, the subjugation of Black people in America has always required a justification, namely that the failures of the black community had nothing to do with the racism they endured. This mythology is central to understanding resistance to racial progress.
Take, for instance, the tragedy experienced by Ben Daniels and his two sons in 1879 after he tried to make a purchase at an Arkansas store with a fifty-dollar bill. Since the White merchant assumed no Black person could honestly acquire that much money, they notified the authorities and, without evidence, accused him of stealing. During the Jim Crow era, it was common for White locals to take the law into their own hands. And this story was no exception. After his arrest, a group of White men overpowered the sheriff, removed the three men from the jail, and lynched them, leaving their bodies on gruesome display to terrorize the black community. In a society that centers on whiteness, Black people were not supposed to be successful. The lynching of Ben Daniels and his son demonstrates the dangers of violating this expectation.
Black success strips the fabric of the well-woven lie of black inferiority and lays the threadbare. Another such example can be found in Oklahoma. O.W. Gurley, a Black businessman born on Christmas Day in 1867 to formerly enslaved parents from Alabama, helped to found a freedmen's town in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After purchasing 30–40 acres of land, he sold the plots only to Black…
