How Barbaric
How Barbaric
Leah Whitcomb
1
I love words. There’s something magical about the way that twenty-six letters can twist and turn and morph itself into words. Words filled with sounds that people use to communicate with each other. Twenty six letters can be rearranged to communicate with another person! That’s amazing! Don’t get me started on foreign words and the beauty encapsulated in each of their syllables! One of my favorite Spanish words is ojalá. Usually, I’m not a fan of guttural words which is why German was such a hard language to learn but ojalá just sounds so beautiful when it’s pronounced. The oh and ala is pronounced regularly with your mouth and tongue but the ha sound (the ja) is pronounced entirely with your throat. God-willing! God willed us with the incredible ability to hear such beautiful notes strung together.
I think what’s just as fascinating as the sound of a word is its connotation. When someone says a word, we automatically think of an image or a string of words that we associate with that word. Like when I say white someone may think of snow, purity, or cleanliness. Or if I said black, one may think of darkness, evil, or death. Or if it was 8th grade me going through my emo phase, I thought black was a symbol of pure perfection because it perfectly complimented every color, including my other shades of black. It’s this connotation that I find mystifying. That when someone says a word, our brain automatically retrieves a group of likenesses that allows us to fully flesh out the word and its meaning to us.
But I’ve always had trouble with this one word. A word that I’ve seen produce such a distance within the US population: barbaric.
Bar-bare-ick. It seems like such a plain word yet the image it evokes is one of a warrior or some muscled man tearing people to shreds. This image could be due in part to my third grade social studies book. It was there that I was first introduced to the word. The Vikings were barbaric. They would murder everyone who got in their way. They devoured their food, had no table manners, and lived among their own rubbish. They only bathed once a week which to my third grade mind was the most disgusting thing I had ever heard of. These people were filthy. They were savages. They were barbaric.
Although my initial image of a barbaric person was a Viking, I don’t think I fully fleshed out the word until middle school. We were reading Night in my gifted and talented class. During our discussion of what would drive Elie Wiesel to kill other people in the concentration camp, the teacher asked each of why someone would kill another person. Many of us answered: to save ourselves. To this question she asked us when we felt another person deserved to die. Some of the students said when someone killed someone else. Almost all agreed that they would have to first kill a family member before they deserved to die. I was the only one in a class full of eleven year olds that insisted that no one deserved to die. The teacher urged me to come up with a real answer – insisting that I must be lying, that I like the other kids, had to have been indoctrinated since an early age to believe that guns are a right and that the value of a life is negotiable. I had to have been taught to shoot a rifle since before I could read. I had to have had at least one mounted 8 point in my living room as a sign of my superior shooting skills. I had to have been taught that it was our job to control the deer population. That if we didn’t shoot them and kill them that they would get too out of hand, and then there would be more deer than people. That killing them was justifiable because they didn’t feel pain. They’re just animals.
2
My parents never took me hunting. Although my father owned a pistol, he didn’t want us to touch it. He wouldn’t even teach us how to shoot it, just kept it locked away in his safe or in the back of his truck to kill the stray raccoon or possum that happened its way into our yard. My mother insisted that guns were of the devil, and if one of us so much as looked it, it possessed enough power to kill us dead. For her, either end of a gun was the wrong end.
This was the South. Guns are a right and people have to die if need be. I could see the chant seeping through her eyes. She firmly believed in this. They all did. This is the South. Jesus loves us. Yes, and he loves the person that you’re trying to kill. The antagonism in her eyes showed that she didn’t like my counter. She had to feel justification in her desire to take another human life. After all if another person who savagely slaughters someone they call similar, then it is an American right to kill them. The American God will forgive them. Their killings are sanctioned by the Divine.
But I knew I was right. I was hell bound and determined to tell her that no one deserved death. It was like when I was four. My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday dinner and I told her pancakes. She tried her best to sway me into having “normal” food because she thought she knew what was best for, but I all I wanted was pancakes. All I wanted was for everyone to live. All she wanted was what she thought was best for me: barbarism.
Somewhere down the line barbarism was equated to terrorism. Those barbaric terrorists. But the definition of terrorism changes depending on who is defining it. Like how the media conditions us all to believe that terrorist equates to Muslim.
3
“You know the KKK still exists”
“That was a long time ago. Things are different now.” He’s white. Home-grown and country. Drives a Ford F-150 and has pockets filled with old money.
“No. Ever since Obama got elected hate groups sprung up all over the country. There are like thousands of them.”
“You can’t believe everything you see online. I’m pretty sure hate groups have gone away.”
“Mississippi was literally the Klan state. You have to believe that some of the KKK is still around.”
“Quit being silly”
4.
Robert Lewis Dear, a pro-lifer, opened fire in a Planned Parenthood in Colorado. He was quoted saying “no more baby parts.” He fatally shot three people and wounded nine others.
5.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I could feel my heart beat thumping in my burning ears. She probably thinks I’m one of those bad person.
“I was holding the dressing room for my sister,” my voice shook. I don’t like the way she’s looking at me.
“I don’t believe you. There’s been way too many of your people who come in here and steal stuff. Empty your pockets,” she commanded.
My six year old hands reached into my pockets, and they came out empty. I was shaking. I could feel tears in my eyes. I was scared. She thought I was a bad person.
6
“Did you hear about that man down in Biloxi? He shot a woman in the face cause she told him not to smoke inside. Yep. He sure did. Shot that woman in the face. What this world coming to?”
7
Six year olds learn how to shoot animals. They put their prize on the wall, and the newspaper covers their success. Six years olds learn how to keep their hands away from merchandise. They put their hands up in the air or away from their body, the newspaper covers their success? (failure?)
8
There’s this division in America that no one addresses. The us and them mentality. “Us” implies likeness. We shared some common thing that brought us into union with one another. “Them” implies difference. They are not like us. They are other. We are separated but one of us has to be superior to the other. One of us must be right.
Become like us. Say that some people deserve to die. Okay, not all people, but really bad people. Like Hitler? Hitler deserved to die right?
Hitler was barbaric. He orchestrated the killings of millions of people. He was a terrible person, but did he deserve to die? He was a human being. He had dreams, aspirations, goals, fears. He was capable of love and hate. We all have the capacity to do what he did, and he was a firm believer that what he was doing what right. She firmly believed that what she was doing was right. I am a firm believer that what I am doing is right. So who’s right?
US and them. Tell me, I’m right. Tell me that we should kill them.
Us and them. I don’t quite understand why people have to die.
US and them. But they killed us. They attacked two thousand Americans we must strike back.
Us and them. But you killed one million, six million, twelve million of them. Innocent people. This is a massacre. This is genocide.
US and them. No, but we are not like them. They kill their own. They kill for sport. They kill themselves. They have no respect for human life. We are more civilized than that. We kill with honor. We kill to defend our country.
Us and them. An eight year old boy has a dream. That one day he’ll grow up and be like his father, a farmer, a vender, a mechanic, a lawyer, a doctor. He walks to school but steps on something that he hears clicks. Before he realizes what has happened, he’s dead. Shreds of him strewn all over the city.
Us and them. “We killed fifteen insurgents today. Our troops are advancing into Bashur…”
Who is right? Who is to be trusted? Us? Or them?
9
I’ll never forget that bloodlust in her eyes. That same desire to commit unquestionable, justifiable killings perpetrates our society. The fact that every November we celebrate the extinction of ninety percent of natives. The extinction of entire peoples, entire cultures, entire languages is justified with: They weren’t strong enough. Disease killed them. If only they were more civilized. If only they didn’t live like animals.
Africa. They’re sell their own people. They eat their dead. They look like monkeys. If only they were more civilized. If only they didn’t act like animals.
Iraq. They shouldn’t have attacked us. They worship the wrong god. Look at the way they treat their women. Look at how they kill their own kind. If only they were more civilized. If only they didn’t act like animals.
The United States. Look at the way they sag their pants and listen to that rap music. They always talk about robbing and shooting up places. They’re such thugs. They’re not like us. They deserve to die. If only they were more civilized. If only they didn’t live like animals.
If only they were more civilized.
Civilization changes the form of barbaric. It doesn’t justify it or make it any less barbaric.
If only they were more like us.
If only they didn’t live like animals.
They look at us as if we aren’t even human. Like we must be surveillanced constantly. If we aren’t, we might steal or rape or kill something of the white man’s. The anxiety eats away that we might do to them what they have done to us. Us and them.
They wait for us to mess up. They want a reason to kill us. Trigger-happy and vindicated, the slightest thing is enough to set them off. We walk on our tip-toes. We tell them that our lives matter, but they tell us that we are selfish for not acknowledging all lives. We tell them that America committed the greatest act of genocide, but we are told that it was warranted. If black people wanted to be free, they would have run. But if we did, we were murdered. If black people were meant to be smart, they would have learned to read. But if we did, we were murdered.
Barbarism fills their laughter when they tell us, “oh, if you all do this, we won’t kill you” with crossed fingers and hard hearts. Barbaric is telling others that their murders are wrong cause they are not backed with the seal of civilization. Barbaric is coercing an eleven year old girl into believed that if she dies, it was warranted because she was one of those people. One of them. That some people are deserving of death because it was their job to control our population. That if they didn’t kill us and shoot us then we would get too out of hand (i.e. protest, revolt, demand that right to live). That killing us was justifiable because we didn’t feel pain. We (natives, black people, Muslims) are just animals. Surely we deserve to die.
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“Bar bar” mocks the language of these foreigners. It’s a term steeped, from the very beginning, in xenophobia.
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I’m not sure how accurate this is since according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report of 2013 in the homicide section, 14 percent of white victims were killed by black offenders and 7.6 percent of black victims were killed by white offenders.
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Hello. FBI reports are inaccurate. Police do not have to report the races of victims or offenders so the data the FBI has is skewed.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hundreds-of-police-killings-are-uncounted-in-federal-statistics-1417577504
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Overall, I find this essay to not be very effected. I think it’s presented close-mindedly and stuck in the past; although the narrator seems to be genuinely concerned with the issue of racism, she resorts to racism upon the race that she is calling racist. Good use of irony though. The essay had me in the beginning. However, it lost me when the essay started to contradict it’s own viewpoints and make numerous assumptions, resulting in a confused essay.
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Thank you so much for reading this and for you comment. I do understand how you may think that this may be close-minded cause I am focusing on a race, but you have to understand that my perspective is very different from yours and my life experiences are different from yours too. I feel as if I was reflecting on a double standard that I often view in society: how white people do a lot of name-calling like calling people terrorists but not acknowledging the fact that a majority of mass shooters are white men who are doing the same thing that they say terrorists are doing.
Being black in America is a very painful and tortured way of living. I experience racism everyday. I promise you that it is not something I make up to make white people feel bad. This is an accurate representation of how I feel and I’m not telling you that you have to agree with it. I just want you to validate my experience.
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I really like the way you used parallelism and repetition to write this essay. It really helps to hone in on the focus of this essay, and I also like how you used very recent events (like the tragedy that occurred at Waffle House) to make it more relevant to readers. I do, however, also agree to a certain extent with Keaton about how you’re writing about the stereotyping and generalizing of races but simultaneously doing the same thing to another race: assuming. I really did like this essay, though; it was very intriguing and well written.
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Thank you so much for reading this and responding.
There’s this really good memoir by Kiese Lamon (former Millsaps student and Vasser college professor) called How To Slowly Kill Yourselves and Others in America. He has this thing called “the worst of white people” which is what black people and other minorities refer to when they talk about white people. It’s not seen as each individual white person being bad because no individual of any race is inherently bad, it is those few bad apples that we refer to.
When I wrote this, I was writing about the double standard I often see. I see all these (white) people around me talking about wanting to kill and murder other people or justifying the killing and murdering of other people (which is racist) but when someone who is not white does it, they are a terrorist. Why aren’t white people called a terrorist when they tend to be the main people who commit a majority of the mass shooting?
I did not write this to stereotype white people and call them “bad”. I wanted to know how can white people have guns and kill people and be exempt from being called barbaric or terrorists? Why is that word reserved for the rest of us (minorities)?
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I am proud that students in our class had the courage to write their essays about personal difficulties that they have experienced. It seems worth pointing out that none of us questioned the validity of the experience in any of the other essays. We should pay Leah’s essay the same respect.
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