Rapper Azealia Banks Wants an Old Horrific Racist Punishment for Sarah Palin
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Rapper Azealia Banks and Sarah Palin are now in an all-out social media war. Banks rants are not new, but this time she tweeted that Sarah Palin should be raped by a gang of Black men. Whoa. Palin then posted on her Facebook account that the rapper is "pro-rape."
Obviously the very un-feminist idea of one woman calling for another to be raped is shocking to read—not to mention definitely NSFW—but also Banks is using an old racist fear of the "black brute" raping white women to punish Palin for saying something Banks found racist. There is definitely some irony here in trying to fight racism with a racist trope.
Palin responded Tuesday with a Facebook post. After an initial gaffe where the account has "condoning" racism instead of "condemning" racism was fixed, she went on to say that Azealia is "pro-rape."
"And now I'll go through my young daughter's playlist to make sure there hasn't been any inadvertent addition of any anti-woman, pro-rape garbage that you seem to endorse, which perpetuates the cultural challenges we face in America. I encourage other parents to do the same."
Banks then posted an incredibly long fake apology letter to Palin, where she said that her comments referred to group sex and not rape.
The history of the fear of Black men dates back to slavery.
Using the fear of sexually violent Black men to punish a white woman is not new. "Although both men and women blacks and whites were victims of lynching, most of those killed were black men; the justification typically proffered was that the victim had raped a white woman," according to the summary of "The Southern Rape and Lynching Complex: The Subordination of Southern Women Through a Mechanism of White Supremacy" by Amy Karen Phillips.
The Palin quotes Banks used in her angry tweets are apparently from a Newslo article that was a mix of satire and real news. She deleted the tweets but Mic took some screen grabs.
Policy.Mic - mic.com
Policy.mic - mic.com
In one tweet she posted a call to action, urging Black men to rape Palin, film it, and put it on the website World Star Hip Hop.
"Honestly...Let's find the biggest burliest blackest negroes and let them run a train on her. Film it and put it on worldstar."
Policy.Mic - mic.com
Although it's never a good idea to recommend or joke about rape as a punishment, even President Obama says so, these tweets are packed with historically racist fears that began during slavery.
The Phillips' research paper talks about the unfounded fear that white people had of Black men and the special punishments reserved for a Black man accused of rape. "Typically, only black men accused of raping white women became lynching victims," it says.
This fear is commemorated in what is widely considered to be America's first feature film, D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation." The silent film opened in 1915 and starred the Klu Klux Klan as protagonists and Black men, many as white men in blackface, as villains lusting after white women.
Youtube/The Movie Treasures - youtube.com
There were riots and violence all over the country after the film's release. More recently ATTN: wrote about Dylann Roof a racist, domestic terrorist who killed nine Black people in a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
AP Photo/David Goldman - apimages.com
He told survivors his reasons for killing Black people.
"You rape our women, and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."
