exerpt: “In the days after the Civil War and emancipation — as black men filled the roads searching for their families — this desire, which one could argue was plagued by guilt and shame, was soon projected onto black folks in the popular imagery of Aunt Jemimas, Uncle Toms, coons, bucks and harlots. It was an attempt to control through media what they could no longer by law. The same iconography was not as prevalent before the war. It was not necessary: The law did the lynching. And as anyone who studies history knows, there is nothing in it that was unique to America or colored people. The same slurs and imagery have been repeated throughout European history whenever a dominant group felt threatened and wished to dehumanize a minority population in order to exert its political will. It is an overwhelmingly effective tactic. We continue to live with it in the form of stereotypes, often sublimated, just as often overt, because fear of blackness — “taking over,” in the words of the Charleston shooter — remains, because many still cannot imagine what life in America would be like as a truly equal society. “