Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jun 2006
Source: Peoria Journal Star (IL)
Copyright: 2006sPeoria Journal Star
Contact:  http://pjstar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/338
Note: Does not publish letters from outside our circulation area.
Author: Pam Adams
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

MURDERS RECALL SAD TIME IN HISTORY

Larry Bright could date black women and still be a racist. He could 
watch black women in pornographic movies and still be a racist.

We don't know, but he could be. To truly understand the dynamics of 
racism is to understand that racism U.S.-style is fraught with 
violence and sexual perversion. They didn't have to castrate black 
men when they lynched them. But they did.

We do know Larry Bright finally got his wish last week. He pleaded 
guilty to killing eight women in a deal that puts him in prison for 
life. Bright is white. All of his victims were black. Repeatedly, we 
have been told, authorities don't believe race motivated Bright's 
killing spree. But that is to misjudge the power racism holds on the 
national psyche.

The families of the victims, and the communities that supported them 
most, set a standard for grace and restraint under circumstances that 
could have been rife with racially tinged revenge fantasies. Their 
reactions to Bright's deal to trade the death penalty for a lifetime 
sentence stand in stark contrast to many police officers' 
disappointment when Jarvis Neely received a life sentence, instead of 
death, for the murder of Peoria Police Officer Jim Faulkner.

 From the beginning, drug use trumped all in the hellish time Bright 
roamed the streets, killing women, burning some of their bodies, then 
crushing the bones. The one something every woman shared was a 
history of drug abuse. The one something Bright shared with them was 
a history of drug abuse.

But white women use drugs, also. White women trade sex for drugs. As 
central Illinoisans know all too well, serial killers kill white 
women, too. But Bright didn't confess to murdering white women and 
burning their bodies in his mother's back yard. Not that he should 
have murdered white women, too, but it would have been much simpler 
to draw conclusions about the non-racial nature of his motives had 
the list of victims been a little more racially integrated.

Bright could have sought out black women because he was steeped in 
any number of racial-sexual stereotypes that still haunt the culture. 
We don't know. But we do know Bright jaywalked racial boundaries in 
ways unusual and unexplored for a serial killer.

Just as certain stereotypes about black men's sexual prowess refuse 
to die, certain stereotypes about black women and their sexuality 
haunt the cultural underworld. A common misperception is that black 
women are more available, less inhibited, more savage, even when 
black prostitutes are compared to white prostitutes.

Another deals in complicated areas of comparisons, contrasts and 
values. White womanhood represents something too pure, too chaste, 
too worthy to subject to compromising, denigrating positions. But 
black women represent the opposite; therefore, predators are 
justified in using them up, burning them, throwing them away.

The culmination of Larry Bright's case calls for a short black 
history lesson. For much of this country's history, dating, marriage 
and sex between the races were illegal in most states, taboo 
everywhere. Except when a white man chose to take a black woman, by 
force or otherwise.

Historically, black women could not cry rape and expect to be heard. 
Black women were supposed to be there for the taking. White women, on 
the other hand, were off limits to black men. Whether Bright realizes 
it, his journey to hell helped dredge up deeply ingrained cultural 
memories about the worth of black life in the past - and newly formed 
hurts and fears about the worth of black life today.

That is partly why, before Bright's arrest, 400 to 500 people showed 
up at two unprecedented town hall forums demanding that authorities 
find the killer. They called on the rest of us to see the victims as 
real women, loved and valued every bit as much as a Nicole Simpson or 
Natalee Holloway.

A coalition of social service agencies responded also, creating 
Rahab's Window, a refuge at the South Side Mission for women on the 
street who believe they are in danger late at night. City of Refuge 
Worship Center, the church that helped organize the town hall 
meetings, created a special center, scheduled to open later this 
month, to help women and men reclaim their lives from substance abuse 
and incarceration.

Larry Bright's life sentence should not be the final chapter in his 
life - or in his victims' deaths. We cannot change what we don't remember.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman