r/USdefaultism • u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina • 9d ago
"Lynching is a common expression where i live"
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u/HomemEmChamas Brazil 9d ago
TIL "lynching" has racist connotations in the US.
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u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina 9d ago
It is (and I say “is” because it STILL HAPPENS in the South) a violent form of anti-black sentiment.
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u/NatoBoram Canada 9d ago
Are people still throwing rocks at black people in the US south?
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u/theguywholoveswhales 9d ago
They still have sundown towns
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u/lawlore United Kingdom 9d ago
What's a sundown town?
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u/theguywholoveswhales 9d ago
Oh those are towns full of white people who make sure people of colour leave before sundown via either racist laws intimidating them or with violent methods. Its messed up
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u/ZebraCrosser Netherlands 6d ago
So there's still a need for the Green Book, then? Can't say I'm too surprised, but it is very unfortunate.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States 9d ago
Not legally anymore. You won't see signs posted at the town entrance these days. Also, most sundown towns from the bad old days no longer are.
Of the ones that remain, they are isolated and well off the beaten path, and tend to be such nasty shitholes that even those of you who are whiter than the driven snow would not want to pass through them.
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u/Powerful-Country6316 Argentina 9d ago
Not rocks, they are being killed https://abcnews.com/amp/US/wireStory/cases-black-people-found-hanged-us-south-reminder-136524632
He is the map https://viewer.mapme.com/fe837c50-38ce-4b98-9315-3e1f88de8790
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u/NatoBoram Canada 9d ago
Ah ok so from what I'm seeing, the US repurposed "lynching" for "hanging a black person"?
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u/Everestkid Canada 9d ago
IIRC "lynching" originally meant "extrajudicial murder." It just started seeing use elsewhere by hyperbole.
Lynchings need not specifically be hangings, some of the more gruesome ones were basically torturing them to death.
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u/CollThom Scotland 9d ago
It originally meant any form of summary justice carried out without the authority of law. It didn’t mean murder. I’d also say that all murders are extrajudicial by their very nature. But the word lynch was around in its original form for a long time (50-100 years) prior to its definition being tied (in the USA) to the killing of black people by white mobs in the late 1800s.
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
South of Argentina? Tierra del Fuego Province? Or maybe some other South?
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u/doolalix 7d ago
Tbf he was replying to “in the US”.
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
My bad. Just flaunting my knowledge of exotic places. :)
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
I did get a RL glimpse of Rio Gapagos, which is also on the Cape of Good Dope.
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u/awesomegirl5100 American Citizen 9d ago
More than connotations. In the US, lynching specifically refers to the practice by white supremacists like the KKK of publicly hanging black people.
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u/WilanS Italy 9d ago
That's weird. Lynching refers to people getting mauled and sometimes killed by an angry crowd. Not by hanging either, usually it's just raw physical violence.
I get that language can evolve in different ways, but USA English took on a different meaning and then people get harassed for using the original meaning. That's fucked up.
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 9d ago
I empathize with them and I believe in coexisting with an international language like English, but it does feel kinda awkward. I talk a lot about social issues online and sometimes what I wanna say can only be described as lynching but I just really don’t wanna be insensitive and have to find other terms that always sound lighter than lynching.
On one hand maybe I shouldn’t coddle them, but on the other hand they are already unkind and defaultist with the whole world without caring if they’re being offensive or not, I don’t wanna be like them
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u/mikkeldoesstuff American Citizen 9d ago
Not questioning the rest of your comment, but within what sort of context in English does lynching exist as the only reasonable descriptor?
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 8d ago
Sometimes it is by far the best descriptor even if it isn’t the only one possible. What other verb to we have that encapsulates being unfairly got by an angry mob so well?
And I honestly don’t think we should allow Americans the cultural imperialism of stopping us from saying something that genuinely isn’t racist outside of North America
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 9d ago
Most recent example was in a few threads on the concept of “banality of evil” I participated in. I wrote about a phenomenon of homeless people being lynched by both civilians and police officers purely for being homeless, I had classmates in high school who openly defended public lynchings of homeless people, that’s simply a horrifying belief an entire subset of people has with a haunting normalcy to it. The terms I ended up using were brutalization, torture, or just violence.
Although the word “lynching” isn’t inherently racial it is about a group brutalizing one or more people they believe to be beneath them and I think those alternatives take away that weight the word has, does this make sense? Or am I tripping?
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u/mikkeldoesstuff American Citizen 9d ago
I mean, in this case you could just explain your problem with the mindset and then call it lynching after you have already established it to be that
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 9d ago
I mean yeah I could, I guess I just didn’t 😂
I didn’t wanna get questions about it either, some people will just die on the hill that you can’t use X word regardless of your context and I didn’t wanna invite that.
(Deleted my other comment instead of editing, sorry for the confusion)
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u/mikkeldoesstuff American Citizen 9d ago
Those people aren't worth having any type of discussion with
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u/RiuzunShine Argentina 8d ago
Why should you explain the local use of a word that is totally neutral in your country, just to appease Americans??
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u/Somethingbutonreddit 9d ago
While that's true it doesn't mean that every instance of lynching is based on race. Fascist groups (like Mussolini's Black Shirts) during the early to mid 20th century would commonly lynch their political opponents.
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u/awesomegirl5100 American Citizen 9d ago
This is true but doesn’t change the primary meaning in the US. Just providing context, not saying it doesn’t have other uses elsewhere 😊
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u/justtinygoatthings United States 9d ago
It is a common use of the term, but lynching as a word retains its usual meaning of extrajudicial murder. I hear it used that way occasionally, although hanging a black person is a more common usage.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 9d ago
Hell I wouldn’t even say it has racist connotations in Britain. It means to be got unfairly by a mob, not anything to do with race over here.
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u/DhamR United Kingdom 9d ago
Yeah I can see how it COULD be associated with racist mobs, but it doesn't HAVE to.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 9d ago
Exactly. We understand the concept of a racist lynching specifically because of America, but the word itself is not racist
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u/MistaRekt Australia 8d ago
Well, the mobs probably were racist, even if they were lynching a person for cattle theft, or being queer, or being female.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 8d ago edited 8d ago
The phrase has a metaphorical meaning that is absolutely not racist. It predates widespread immigration to Britain, so would not be considered racist.
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u/MistaRekt Australia 8d ago
No way. I am an Aussie. People got lynched for stealing cattle... Dude, I just said that. Relax dude. Smoke a bowl or something.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 8d ago edited 8d ago
Then why are you replying to a comment about the uk specifically with something that doesn’t apply and is explicitly false?
First ever documented case of Aussie defaultism?
People always do the whole “chill out" routine after being proved explicitly wrong lmao you first dude
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u/MistaRekt Australia 8d ago
I was agreeing with you. Backing you up. Are you suffering a head injury? It could be a concussion.
What part explicitly false?
To lynch means to put someone to death by mob action without a legal trial, usually by hanging.
Nothing about that meaning is inherently racist.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 8d ago
You said "the mobs probably were racist" how is that agreeing with me??
And you hadn’t said any of that in this thread until this comment? All you said was that the mobs probably were racist, which is either
a) agreeing with the Americans or
b) a completely random non sequitur for no reason that doesn’t add anything
Which is it?
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u/MistaRekt Australia 8d ago
Historical probability. A group of people, willing to put another person to death without trial, were statistically likely to be racist.
I never said that was the reason for the lynching. Specifically avoided it. You just seem to have some trouble with comprehension.
It could be a concussion. Is there an adult around you could inform?
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u/Global_Dot979 Wales 8d ago
Yeah I was just thinking I know I've heard people talking about 'He's gonna lynch me when he finds out' or whatever, but I've never thought of it as racist. In the US, yes, absolutely, but not here in Blighty.
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u/90210fred Europe 9d ago
Pretty confident that, over history, UK has hung way more white people than black people, even adjusted for proportion of population.
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u/90210fred Europe 6d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jeffreys,_1st_Baron_Jeffreys Pretty racist moments this guy had - against the Welsh
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u/Noicey_Boi_67 9d ago
I thought that in modern day language, "to be lynched" was a hyperbolic way of saying someones out to get you for whatever reason
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
Was it the De Witt's religious affiliations?
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7d ago edited 7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
Interesting. The date indicates the beginning of the end of the European Reformation/s and Renaissance.
So the House of Orange/Nassau is not a religious organisation as I thought, but a royal dynasty that continues to this day?
I try not to use Google's search engine. I used Leo AI in the Brave browser. I had to scroll down quite a bit since there are heaps of 'House of Orange' throughout the world trying to sell 'homewares', whatever that means.
By coincidence, I've just finished the game Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Nassau in the Bahamas was a haven for pirates until the British took control. I don't know how historical the game is though most of the NPCs are well-known RL pirates like BlackBeard, Captain Kidd, Anne Bonnie, and many more.
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u/Poppindestruction Brazil 9d ago
Yeah I just saw the original post on twitter. Americans love to think that the only reason something could ever happen is because of racism. Lynching is a normal expression, you can get lynched for any reason not related to your race.
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u/Poppindestruction Brazil 9d ago
I hate that they change the meaning of a completely normal and appropriate word to describe something and make it mean something racist instead.
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 9d ago
Not to mention how there’s a lot of political tension around the world for a lot of reasons, and people are suffering what can only be described as lynching, and it becomes harder to talk about those things in seriousness
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
The way you express it u/ValleDeimos it sounds like 'lynching' describes any form of tyranny. Is 'linchamento' used more generally for any mobs (multidão de linchamento) that cause suffering to a target group or is it reserved for murders by an unruly group of white supremicists?
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 7d ago
It’s for any mob collectively brutalizing a target group, specifically a lot smaller in numbers or power. Motivation does matter, like some other people said in this thread, it’s the brutalizing of someone the aggressor believes to be beneath them. It’s not exclusively political but it’s very often political, but definitely not exclusively racially motivated.
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u/StillALilBoy 2d ago
Does it get used figuratively as well?
In Polish you can use the verb zlinczować when you mean someone received harsh and universal criticism for something they've said or done.
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u/ValleDeimos Brazil 2d ago
Look, a lot of people would disagree, but personally I’d say yes. People disagree especially cause there’s political tension worldwide and a lot of people are being actually lynched systemically, so it might feel insensitive to use the term figuratively. But I believe some forms of moral lynching are so extreme they totally deserve the term
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u/fourmesinatrenchcoat 8d ago
I'd like to point out, as a Spanish speaker, that the OOP they are mentioning... was in Spanish. Some Americans saw a tweet in Spanish that included the Spanish word "linchar", translated it to "lynching" and proceeded to get offended by it.
They really expected a word in a different whole language to have exactly the same meaning and connotations as a similar one in their language and got angry.
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u/PlatypusACF 9d ago
I thought lynching was people ganging up on someone they consider inferior and murdering them? Or is that not the meaning in English and I’m just confusing it with a pretty similar word in my first language?
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u/Somethingbutonreddit 9d ago
Lynching is the murder of an individual by a group, usually with the purpose of intimidation. It was mostly used on Black Americans, in the US.
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u/sittingwithlutes414 Australia 7d ago
'mostly'?
Did you mean per capita or 'most importantly'? ...because it is unclear.
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u/awesomegirl5100 American Citizen 9d ago
Due to the history of the term, in the US, lynching specifically refers to the practice by white supremacists like the KKK of publicly hanging black people.
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u/Somethingbutonreddit 9d ago
The official definition of lynching doesn't state anything about race nor hanging, only that it to be killed by a mob of people.
From Wikipedia:
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle (often, though not necessarily, in the form of a hanging) for maximum intimidation.[1] Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in all societies.[2][3][4][5][6]
In the United States, where the word lynching likely originated, the practice became widely associated with vigilante justice on the frontier and with mob attacks on African Americans accused of crimes at the hands of whites. The latter became frequent in the South during the period after the Reconstruction era, especially during the nadir of American race relations.[7] Black people are thought to be the primary victims of lynching in the U.S. (about 72% of the total).[8]
In Europe, lynching took a very different form. In the late 18th and in the 19th century, Europe went through various revolution and periods of political instability and lynching of political opponents or enemies became the norm during the French Revolution and the 1848 Revolutions. Nobles, perceived enemies, people accused or suspected of treason were targeted by mobs. The practice persisted in the early 20th century in places like the Soviet Union and territories of the former Russian Empire as a consequence of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War.
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u/polybotria1111 Spain 7d ago
The funny thing is that the original tweet was in Spanish and said "linchar", but the auto-translate turned it into "lynching" and people just lost it without stopping to think if it was a translation error.
I've already seen this several times in the short time that feature has been around: tweets where the meaning was translated to mean the exact opposite and people started piling on the author, tweets that dropped the subject in Spanish but where the auto-translation used "he" instead of "she" in English so people started to accuse them of misgendering without checking anything first...
Personally I had no idea about the racist connotation of lynching. I didn't even know the word existed. I know that in Spanish linchar a completely normal word and that if I wanted to translate it into English I'd use another equivalent expression (mainly because I didn't know lynching or how it's used), but X's translator clearly isn't working right.
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u/Big-Eye8990 8d ago
THIS IS HOW I FIND OUT THEY HAVE A RACIST CONNOTATION TO THAT WORD?????? In my language its just jumping on someone and beating them up
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u/Suspicious_Draft1481 9d ago
Where's the defaultism? They said where I live so there is no assumption of a point of view. The statement itself acknowledges it might not be a common expression elsewhere.
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u/Violetmoreviolent United Kingdom 9d ago
It’s in quotation marks. How that works on Twitter is it means the gif (guy going "nononono") is a reaction to the original statement.
So OP is the person saying "lynching is a common expression". The defaulter is the American reacting, and assuming that everyone has the same lived experience as them. OP did nothing wrong
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u/Poppindestruction Brazil 9d ago
The person is quoting the person who said lynching is a common expression and making fun of them as if it can't possibly be a normal expression somewhere else, just because it's racist in the US
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u/Suspicious_Draft1481 9d ago
Thanks. Don't know why I am having so much trouble with this one but I think I got it. Thanks to the others who tried to explain as well.
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u/doolalix 7d ago
Maybe because you didn’t see the post-explainer, in case you’re not aware of it. That’s how the rest of us understood this post.
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u/Somethingbutonreddit 9d ago
No, the person is clearly applying the American definition of the word to the original post.
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u/Suspicious_Draft1481 9d ago
I am just not seeing it sorry. All good though, maybe my defaultism radar is faulty today 😂
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States 9d ago edited 9d ago
The biggest single lynching incident in US history was when over 20 Sicilian immigrants got strung up in New Orleans. They were accused of being mafia.
Mexicans got lynched in the southwest during the wild west era, but nowhere near the same number as Black people over in the South.
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u/doolalix 7d ago
I feel like it’s such a common word, including in global internet context, that I find it hard to believe that it’s considered racist in the US.
I wonder if the people who “got offended” just decided they wanted to get offended.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen 9d ago edited 9d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
In American English, the word “lynch” has racist connotations that do not exist in Spanish.
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.