Koritha Mitchell’s Living with Lynching and James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man”
In the book Living with Lynching, Koritha Mitchel studies the so-called “lynching drama” and the role that lynching played in the American culture. She claims that the depictions of racial violence produced by the black and white communities at the end of the 19th century differed significantly and served different purposes (Mitchell 1). While the white population valued the images of death, the African American community developed “lynching drama” as a way to cope and live with the violence that was an inherent part of their everyday lives.
In the story “Going to Meet the Man,” James Baldwin examines the subject of racism from a different perspective. The main character is a white police officer who has problems with sexual erection and gets aroused only by images of racial violence. He was raised in a society based on the ideas of white supremacy, and racism is so deep-seated in his brain that defines his entire personality and influences his sex life.
Baldwin’s main idea is that oppression has a more dehumanizing effect on the oppressor than on the oppressed. This theory is supported by Mitchel’s study of racial violence. In the white community, African Americans were portrayed as “an evil that would destroy society: black men were supposedly rapists who cared nothing for stable domesticity, and black women were claimed to be whores incapable of creating it anyway” (Mitchell 2). On the contrary, among African Americans, the protest against oppression resulted in the development of a culture based on optimism and a strong sense of community. While white oppressors behaved like animals led by violent instincts, the oppressed strived to retain their humanity in any way possible.
Foucault’s Panopticism and James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man”
Foucault’s Panopticism studies the measures implemented in 17th-century European towns to stop the plague, particularly the Panopticon project, and discusses how they facilitated the development of the prison system and shaped the perception of power. Foucault writes, “rather than the massive, binary division between one set of people and another, the project called for multiple separations, organization in depth of surveillance and control, an intensification and a ramification of power” (4). The surveillance system of the Panopticon was based on principles of automatized and disindividualize power (Foucault 6). The machine aimed to create and sustain a power relation independent of the person who exercises it and ensure the universality of disciplinary controls.
The structure of society in the times when racism prevailed in the Southern states resembles the one described in Panopticism. The society was divided into the oppressors and the oppressed, and those who had the power felt free to do anything they wanted with the members of the African American population. However, the system lacked the anonymity and deindividualization that Panopticon was based on. Those in power were separate individuals, and, although generally united in their acts of violence, had their own personal feelings towards the situations they were engaged in.
In Baldwyn’s story “Going to Meet the Man,” the author describes a man in a position of power whose personal feelings interfere with his work as a police officer. Suffering from repressed feelings and personal trauma, he is often driven by hatred when performing his duties. He cannot act as an anonymous tool, releasing his anger and hatred on the people within his power. Therefore, the readers can clearly see the reflection of Panopticon in the story, particularly, in personal feelings of those in power interfering with their duties. The author uses it as a symbol of the faulty nature of the system of oppression that existed in American society.
Works Cited
Foucault, Michael. “‘Panopticism’ from Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison.” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008, pp. 1-12.
Mitchell, Koritha. Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930. U of Illinois P, 2011.