In 1903 the Eastman-Kodak company designed film to create pictures that could easily be printed on postcards. One of the most grotesque ways this new technology was utilized was in the making of lynching postcards.

How nonchalant (& even joyous) the people in these photos look.

What lack of humanity sanctions gathering with your family to pose for a picture with a man, woman or child that you’ve tortured/murdered smiling!

What a sickness / what evil it is to then send such a photo to a friend or family member to memorialize the occasion.

People sold tickets to lynchings. The mob was often invited to participate in the torture.

Body parts & pieces of rent & charred clothing were also taken (and sometimes sold) as souvenirs.

Phillip Dray wrote: “lynching was an undeniable part of daily life, as distinctly American as baseball games [...] Men brought their wives and children to the events, posed for commemorative photographs, and purchased souvenirs [...] as if they had been at a company picnic”

I can’t help but to consider the straight line drawn between the audacity and inhumanity of whiteness that produces lynching postcards and the whiteness on display at the US Capitol on Jan 6th.

In videos of the terrorists storming the capitol some are downright giddy - filming their treason on their smart phones. Taking selfies. As the lynchmobs of the early 20th century were, they are unconcerned that this photographic and video evidence would be in anyway damning.

They have no fear of incrimination and speak to media boldly without shielding their identity because they do not see themselves as criminals and have no reason to believe based on historical record, that they will be treated like criminals.

There are reports some traveled to DC for what they were calling “the revolution” as a family.

Toni Morrison called children as “the only immortality we will ever have”

Bringing your children to the viewing of a murder or to a coup? The perceived invincibility of whiteness!

“They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots”

The shock of this insurrectionist says it all - that mobs of people show up to lynchings & anti-desegregation demonstrations and to “storm the capitol” to flex whiteness/white supremacy.

We’ve only softly knocked it down - a slap on the wrists for a lawmaker quoting Hitler, admonition of the commander in chief to condemn the most notorious members of his white supremacist base.

Arrests of white terrorists after they’re first allowed to leave the scene

But when it truly matters, this nation has always failed to truly condemn whiteness. What’s more, whiteness is an ordering principle of American social norms and values as well as all economic, political and educational institutions.

Slave owners went on to become share croppers who under-compensated (or didn’t compensate) the men and women who worked their land.

Lynch mob attendants & postcard recipients raised children who became adults who would spit & curse at children on their way to school.

People violently opposing de-segregation fathered others who would be outraged by the election of a Black president & venerate the words and dog-whistles of a white supremacist

Unchecked whiteness begets unchecked whiteness and all of the toxicity and death that comes with it.