Whenever a young Black man is accused of harming a white woman, conservatives do more than report. They are attempting to resurrect, I would say purposefully, centuries racial bigotry. From antebellum slave patrols to Jim Crow lynchings, from the Scottsboro Boys to Emmett Till, the trope of the dangerous Black male and the innocent white female has been among the most potent myths in America. It is as old as the society that built race into law, fear into culture. And in 2025, it seems that nothing has changed.
The Charlotte light rail stabbing suspect’s criminal history is ostensibly a factual account of DeCarlos Brown Jr.’s alleged killing of a Ukrainian refugee. But beneath the surface lies the continuation of a narrative that does more than inform it terrorizes, ostracizes, frames, and judges before verdicts. It treats Brown not merely as a defendant, but as a symbol.
Immediately, the man is not the accused but framed by his criminal past. Even before trial.
Conservatives emphasize Brown’s criminal background, his previous felonies, misdemeanors, probation, parole. All legitimate public record. Yet in layering so many past allegations many of which resulted in dismissal, conservatives try to create a cumulative portrait of guilt, of “otherness,” even in the absence of motive or even confirmation.
The victim was presented not first as a human being or in her own right, but in her whiteness. The juxtaposition of Black male defendant, white female victim is not incidental. It is the very substance of a conservative trope that appeals to deeply racialized fears.
This pattern has a long and shameful lineage:
Lynching Era: The myth of the Black rapist often the only excuse needed to incite a mob flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Newspapers often headlined alleged “attacks” with lurid detail, rarely bothered with due process, and almost always presumed guilty if race and gender aligned in this precise way.
The Scottsboro Boys (1931): Nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in Alabama. Media sensationalism around their trial rested less on evidence than on the powerful symbol: Black male bodies, white female virtue.
Emmett Till (1955): A fourteen-year-old Black boy, lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman though even that is disputed. The newspapers didn’t just report they stoked.
If we do not call this out, every subsequent headline where “Black man attacks white woman” will leave behind not just news, but the scaffolding of fear, separation, and injustice. And in that, America becomes less safe.
Photo by Jabo Elysée on Unsplash
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