Being housed in a black body always carries an element of danger no matter where you are. Now a prominent voice in Hollywood has further confirmed it to be true.
Liam Neeson recently described wanting to kill “some ‘black bastard’” following the brutal rape of a close friend nearly 40 years ago in an interview with The Independent. He asked the friend for the colour of the person who raped her, along with other distinguishing characteristics. But, he decided that race would be the sole determining factor without height, weight, or other descriptions taken into account.
Not only did he proclaim violence. Like the vigilantes he is known for portraying in movies, he armed himself with a weapon, and went to seek vengeance.
Specificity is needed here to highlight how disturbing his actions were. Neeson claimed he went “up and down areas with a cosh” for over a week or more. He hoped to start a fight with any black man walking out of a pub or who looked as if they wanted to have a go at him.
He admitted to hunting for innocent black men in their own neighbourhoods to kill.
His comments reverberated across the black diaspora in the UK as well as the USA. Neeson has been a naturalised citizen of the USA for about a decade: a brutally appropriate place to draw context about racialised violence.
This is what makes his mindset so dangerous: it predicates on a still breathing stereotype that black men pose a danger to others
His comments came just days shy of Trayvon Martin’s 24th birthday. The 17-year-old’s murder at the hands of a local vigilante, George Zimmerman, helped to spark the Black Lives Matter movement in America.
The now public statements of both men uttered while they hunted innocent black men have similarities. Zimmerman claimed in a 911 call that “these assholes… they always get away.” Neeson said he “hoped some [gesturing with air quotes] ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could… kill him.”
At least one person on Twitter has already made the connection that Liam Neeson was a George Zimmerman who never found a Trayvon Martin.
Indiscriminate fantasy violence running a long, crimson history in the USA.
In America, following the end of slavery, mobs of enraged white vigilantes would regularly tear innocent black bodies from their homes mostly in the southern USA. Their bodies were used in barbaric purging rituals. Blacks were stripped naked, beaten, and hung from trees by ropes until they choked to death. Sometimes the mobs burned their bodies or dismembered them and took home pieces as trophies. This terrorism was called “lynching” and often occurred in public spaces where they were even photographed. Many times, lynchings served as family outings where kids were present. Reasons for this indiscriminate violence varied from perceptions that former slaves gained too much freedom to revenge for white women being assaulted or raped, even if there was no proof a rape occurred, or that the person being lynched carried out the crime.
Masses of white vigilantes hunted in black neighbourhoods of their cities or towns looking indiscriminately for black bodies to destroy.
This American history is also recent. Lynchings did not end until the late 1960s: a mere 50 years ago. Neeson would have been around 15 years old when the last lynchings occurred.
This is what makes his mindset so dangerous: it predicates on a still breathing stereotype that black men pose a danger to others. We are fit to be game and beaten indiscriminately for crimes where we had no involvement. Neeson wasn’t looking for black men harassing women or any black man who was a known sex offender. Any black body would do: the same as a lynch mob mentality.
His best answer was drawing from a traumatic event that occurred 40 years ago which drove him to seek racial violence
The story Neeson revealed, first to a reporter at The Independent, was in response to a question of how he injects anger into his characters. His best answer was drawing from a traumatic event that occurred 40 years ago which drove him to seek racial violence. Has this dark anger driven him his entire lengthy career? When I cheered his character on in Taken, was I betraying myself?
This damage has been done and redone from his subsequent appearance on Good Morning America. Whether his career can survive is up for debate, but I see a path for redemption.
Neeson should place as much fury and dedication into hunting down and killing his own bias and racist thoughts with appropriate professional help. He should use that newfound knowledge and his platform to educate others who look like him. Then, maybe one day black bodies will be a little safer in public spaces.
Neeson must place equal fervour into the cure as he did for the hunt.
Tyree Barnette is an African-American writer based in Sydney.
