Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I'm still not onto Black history. I'm still working through white US history.
Q: Why do Black folk get so upset when people ask them if they live in this neighborhood? I saw a Black stranger in my building and I just asked him if he lived here and can I see 3 forms of government ID, and now I'm the racist? How? I voted for Obama! Twice! Why are Black folk so sensitive about this?
A: Racism. This is a legacy of slavery and ethnic cleansing. Seriously.
1/N
During slavery there were slave patrols. Slave patrols enforced the "slave codes," brutal laws that dictated what slaves could or could not do, and where they could exist. Slave patrols were formed of white slave owners and non-slave owning citizens.
Any white man was allowed and expected to stop any Black person and interrogate them to make sure that they're not up to sneaky Black stuff.
During the civil war, many Southern states codified into law this expectation that all white men should be on the lookout for Black people sneaking around, living life free and stuff. States like Georgia brought their "citizens arrest" law into existence in 1863 for this exact reason.
"Now we are all slave patrol!"
("We" means "white people.")
After slavery was abolished in 1865, slave codes evolved into "Black codes," brutal laws that governed what Black folk could or could not do. Slave patrols evolved into official Black patrols (AKA the Police force) or unofficial Black patrols like the Ku Klux Klan, also formed in 1865. It was an eventful year. 🤷🏿♂️
Any white man was allowed and expected to stop any Black person and interrogate them to make sure that they were not up to sneaky Black stuff.
The Black codes evolved into Jim Crow, brutal laws that governed what Black folk could or could not do. Between the police, the KKK and the white citizens' councils, there were lots of official and unofficial groups policing Black folks' movement.
White folk could harass Black people themselves, or they could escalate up the chain of violence, either the official one, or the unofficial one. "I'll call the police on you!" Or "I'll call the Klan!" Or "I'll call my husband and his brother on you!"
This chain of violence was used to maintain "sundown towns," entire cities and counties where Black people could be beaten or killed, just for being there after dark.
https://justice.tougaloo.edu/map/
Segregation was created and maintained by violence on an unimaginable scale. Here's just one county:
As in the time of slavery, and Black codes, and Jim crow, white men that kill Black people while acting as part of this chain of violence, are legally shielded from prosecution.
Many white folk don't even know this history of why they feel so comfortable asking a Black person to prove that they belong in an area. But they participate in it.
If you are white in the US, think of how many times *in your entire life* that a Black citizen with no authority whatsoever, walked up to you, detained you, and demanded that you show ID.
The number of times is likely to be close to zero, even if you live in a majority Black neighborhood. It just doesn't happen in reverse. 🤷🏿♂️
Participating in this chain of violence has not changed much in the past 100 years. The NextDoor app is a fancy way to either find your lost cat, or to police the movements of Black people.
Ahmaud Arbery was murdered by 3 white men with no authority who wanted to detain him under that 1863 citizens arrest law from the civil war.
Through US history, groups like the NRA have sold the importance of having a gun to protect yourself from Black intruders. Before the advent of smartphones, we would often hear stories brave white folk protecting their community from prowlers.
What Black folk knew before smartphones, and before Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin, or Emmett Till, is that many of these incidents were just murder by white people participating in the chain of violence to control Black movement and behavior.
Carolyn Bryant lied about Emmett Till, escalated up the chain of violence to her husband, sat in the car with him as they drove around looking for Emmett, allowed that child to be kidnapped, tortured and murdered, and then lied about it in court.
She hasn't even been charged with a crime.
The other murderers were also acquitted.
The authorities know where she lives. There's no statute of limitations on her crime. We just don't want to prosecute her. We like the chain, just not where it leads.
There's a town in Ohio where the Fire Department blares a siren at 6:00 p.m. Black people don't like that. Young white people don't understand, because to them, it's just a siren?
But people that know white US history, know that there were hundreds of sundown towns that blared a similar siren at 6:00 p.m. This was intentional terrorism against Black people.
The siren meant that if you were Black and in the town after 6pm, you could be beaten or killed.
The Purge IRL, but only for Black folk.
One of the most accurate bombers in WW2 was the German Stukka. It dove in a steep parabola before dropping its bombs. The Nazis put an air siren on the plane. The faster the plane, the louder the siren and the higher the pitch.
Stukka pilots hated the siren! Early versions couldn't be turned off, so they would have to listen to it the whole flight. Annoying!
Computer game Stukka bombing a bridge:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/czSiTEL62Ms
But the Nazis kept the sirens, because they knew the terrifying psychological effect that it had on soldiers on the ground.
Movie scene of Stukka sound from soldiers' perspective, with Doppler effect and increasing volume as plane passes.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WygmbuU_78c
The bomb itself could only harm a small number of people, but the siren's threat of such an accurate bomb, imminently arriving, changed the behavior of tens of thousands.
For some, Stukka sounds caused lasting trauma after the war.
This makes the Ohio fire dept siren the perfect dog whistle, pun intended.
If I were to play Stukka dive bomb sounds outside the window of the geriatric wing of the Veterans' Admin every day, people would understand why that could be traumatic.
But a sundown siren in Vermilion, Ohio every day at 6pm is not understood to be traumatic.🙂🙃
Ohio is a state with a history of racist lynchings, pogroms, ethnic cleansing, and sundown towns. Sundown towns near Vermilion absolutely did use a 6pm siren.
"Our fire department has always worn white hoods!" is a little too on the nose.
As an anti-racist white person living in the US, your task is to understand this chain of violence escalation, and your part in it. You can simply choose not to participate.
As a Black person, it's useful to know that as WW2 wore on, the terrifying effect of the Stukka wore off. That sound just conveniently tells you where the sky Nazis are. And the drag from the sirens made the Stukka slower and more vulnerable.🤡🤷🏿♂️
@mekkaokereke My father grew up in Anna, Illinois, which is to this day a nasty hellhole, recently covered by ProPublica. https://features.propublica.org/illinois-sundown-towns/legend-of-anna/
In the 1970s, the US Navy turned him into an anti-racist, because, as he said, he saw people working just as hard as he was being treated like nobody ought to be treated. Still, it took him decades to stop calling it “the war of northern aggression.” As a joke, he said.
The evil of sundown towns runs deep, and is ongoing.
There’s a suburb of Dallas called “White Settlement,” a name that dates back to it being where wypipo lived, in contrast to that indigenous Native Americans. In 2005 they held an election to possiblly change the name, as city leaders said it was embarrassing. The vote failed, 2,388 to 219.
White Settlement is also a nasty hellhole, of course.
“Our fire department has always worn white hoods” resonates deeply.
When I was very young, just on the cusp of conscious memory, I lived in a small town with a single traffic light, Spring City, Pennsylvania.
Dad and a couple neighbors were volunteer Firefighters. Any time the siren went off, they'd go running, except for one particular siren in the evenings.
I'm 41 now, and it didn't even occur to me until this thread what that actually meant.
Sometimes, all it takes to indoctrinate is to omit details.
@mekkaokereke ever since I learned about the lack of public swimming pool thing, I learned to assume that anything odd about the United States from a European perspective is with high likelihood rooted in racism. Easy to see for things like public transit being crap, but even testing of sirens with unreasonably high frequency is due to racism as you show.
I haven't looked into why trains honk all the time yet, but I would be very much not surprised if it has something to do with racism.
@mekkaokereke wow, that firehouse siren perfectly exemplifies the momentum of racism in tradition. So many behaviors in my home town were racist, but they were "fine" because they were tradition. Inspecting the basis for tradition, you find it's not "culture" or "heritage" in a good sense like "this is how we cook pork in this town", but straight up just racist.
The confederate flag treated as just another texture to cover a surface with is a biggie back home. "It'S jUst oUr hERitAge". -- Well, actually yes but not in the way that you mean.
That Vermilion is right next to (one of) the largest blue bubble in that state probably pains them so much they need to double down on the "old days" when nobody questioned their motives :-/
@RADC That is correct.
Curious, what was the name of the Canadian town?
@RADC Unfortunately, there were sundown towns in Ontario, Canada as well. Some notorious ones were Leamington and Kingsville, closer to Detroit.
There were many sundown towns on the US side of the boarder. Tonawanda, NY had a sign that said any N-words found after 6pm would be killed.
A bumble bee can't sting you, but the yellow and black stripes are not an accident. There are brightly colored "poison arrow" frogs, that are harmless to predators, and quite delicious! The color is no accident.
@SilentMobius @[email protected]
His ears are closed. He blocked me after I pointed out that there were in fact sundown towns near where he lived in Canada, and that the sirens did carry that meaning.
Some people see any acknowledgement of racism as a personal attack. Happens.🤷🏿♂️
Other people look at racism and say, "Whoa! That was messed up! We should not do that type of thing anymore!" I post for them.👍🏿
For the record, I fully support his muting and blocking me! Everyone should protect their peace.
And in 1930 in Oakville Ontario, near Welland, the Canadian Klan did their version of a "polite racism."
75 white men in Klan robes drove to the house of an interracial couple. They kidnapped the white woman and drove her to her parents' house. They kidnapped the Black man (Ira Johnson, a Black US veteran), and drove him to his parents. They burned a cross on his parents lawn, and walked away without actually killing anyone.
The mayor thought this was quite a reasonable white action.🤷🏿♂️
@RADC @mekkaokereke Firehouses where I grew up (Long Island, NY) tested their sirens daily at noon and 6pm. It was a double honk, where the actual call for a fire was repeating triples.
I'm absolutely not making the claim that Long Island was some kind of racism-free utopia, especially not in the 1980s. But unlike Vermilion, we didn't even have a playground-level urban legend that the firehouse siren was anything but a firehouse siren. (1/2)
@RADC @mekkaokereke The noon test was a little distracting if we were trying to concentrate on schoolwork, but the 6pm test meant we needed to be home for dinner "or else!"
I see no reason to *not* believe that some towns used their fire sirens for less innocent purposes. Especially in Ohio.
And I definitely see no good reason to suggest that any of the info in this thread is exaggeration.
@emery @RADC @mekkaokereke Indeed not.
Ask any indigenous people in Canada how free of racism Canada is. Ask people perceived as Chinese c.2020-present. (Or, for that matter, "Chinese" people c.2000, the year I left Canada "for a year or two" and have never returned.)
If you're white, and especially a white man, in Canada you're likely very honest when you say you see no racism.
Because it's not directed at you.
@RADC @mekkaokereke The racism in Canada is expressed very differently than the racism in the USA.
It's more polite.
@SamuelBepis it's tradition!🤡
And sure, there's evidence of a 6pm siren being used in nearby towns where signs said, "This is a sundown town" and Black folk were killed for being there... And there is evidence from Black nearby residents (who don't really count) that Vermilion was a sundown town... but there is no concrete evidence (white people admitting) that Vermilion was a sundown town! It's all just a fantastic coincidence!🤡
And why do woke people hate our brave fire department? Too woke!
I suspect when they started the ‘tradition’ they *felt* they were being generous and transparent. Not actual violence, just fair warning of ‘the way things are’ so you can get yourself out of harm’s way. It’s always best if the oppressed will cooperate in their oppression. Then there’s no need for ‘unpleasantness’, and we can keep being ‘good quiet people’.
Thank you for continuing to shine a light on the ‘look what you made me do to you’ awfulness of race in NA.
I'm sure you're hip, but must pass along this reference book: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen. [https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/sundown-towns/]
It explains why *every* 'Merkin city looks the way they do.
FUN FACT: There were more Sundown Town signs in the north than the south because in the south Black folks knew their place.
History is fun. Let's teach it while it's still legal.
@xargos32 True, which is why I didn't say it was exclusively for that.
But I'm curious, what was the name of the town that you are referring to?
Thanks!
And yeah, Southbridge was surrounded by Massachusetts and Connecticut sundown towns. The siren meant the end of the work day in many towns. In the case of nearby sundown towns, work ending meant get out, or if you couldn't, harbor in place at the factory or a friend's house.
This scene from Lovecraft Country was based on sundown towns in Massachusetts. This is fictional Salem County though, not Worcester.
@mekkaokereke No question there were sundown towns in Massachusetts and construction. There's still a lot of obvious racism in addition to the "polite" type, too. People need to realize it's not just a Southern thing.
Lovecraft Country looks interesting. Shame HBO cancelled it after just one season.
@mekkaokereke I thought that was illegal now.
All of it.
Also, I saw an article where there was still a sign out in a town (The article didn't say which one) and the mother who was a woman of color drove until she new she was past the sign...causing he three your old child to wet herself in the process because she was afraid of being caught in said 'soundown town.'
It's sad that that fear still pervads society to this day. This...sholuldn't be. It's fuckoing 2025. Tet with it, or get the fuck out.
(And yes, that refers to the currentPOSUS Peice of Shit US. (Irefews to call him the ... proper term. He's a fucking buffoon. -T
Which town, if you're comfortable sharing?
@ironcladlou it's not a holdover from the sundown town days, because sundown towns are not gone. There are still many throughout the US. If your town has that alarm, take a close look at its demographics.
I appreciate your history lessons.
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