Jessie Davis and Bobby Cutts: It’s About Interracial Sex Folks
by guest contributor Rachel Sullivan, originally published at Rachel’s Tavern and Alas
Ok, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say something about the latest crime to become a media circus. I’m sure by now most of you have heard about the murder of Jessie Davis, who was almost 9 months pregnant and was likely killed in front of her two year old child by the child’s father. Since Davis and Cutts were a black/white couple and I am someone who studies black/white interracial relationships and who is in a black/white interracial relationship, I know many people are wondering what I think about this case. I’m not here to offer any opinions on the particulars of the case1 , but I do want to talk about the media coverage of the case.
I went around to a few blogs, and I visited AOL Blackvoices and a couple white supremacist message boards to see what they were saying, and quite frankly it was horrible. Many people were saying that the victim deserved it; that she was “white trash;” that her child was ugly; and that she was a sleazy, homewrecking whore. Not surprisingly, the accused murderer, who is the poster boy for anti-black stereotypes, was also being trashed as a violent womanizer who lusted after white women. I can’t tell you how many racist and misogynistic comments I read; and not surprisingly the white supremacists were giddy over this case.2
Terrence Says has a reasonable post, which anonymous bigots tried to take over in the comment thread, and in his post, Terrence engages with the question that many folks are thinking–is the media circus surrounding this case about race? Terrence cites a recent case of a white man who killed his white wife and three children:
Today, like Bobby Cutts, Jr. who was arrested in Ohio, Christopher Vaughn was also arrested. Christopher Vaughn was arrested two hours prior to the funeral of his family in St. Charles County, Missouri (suburban St. Louis) where the family originated; yet, so far, there has not been a mention of Vaughn’s arrest that I have been able to observe on the weekend news shows.
As sad and tragic as the Jessie Davis story is, I can’t help but wonder if this story had involved a missing pregnant black or Latina woman if it would have the same media traction.
Well several of the anonymous commenters went crazy, saying that the case received so much attention because Davis was pregnant, because Cutts was a cop, because the child was left in the house alone, and everything but race. I certainly agree that all of those things make the story more sensational, but I really can’t fathom that it is much more sensational than the Vaugh family case mentioned above. However, I find myself having a slight disagreement with Terrence. I agree that white women victims get much more attention than Black, Asian, Latino, and American Indian women, and I agree that race is a big factor in the media attention the case has gotten, but I would be more specific than Terrence.
It’s about interracial sex. Interracial crimes make big sensational news stories, but crimes that involve interracial sexuality arouse the deepest passions of American bigotry. The OJ Simpson case, the Duke Rape, the Kobe Bryant rape case, and now this one–they all have tremendous sexual overtones. For a long time, I was surprised at how much attention the Duke case received, because I was focused on the fact that the accuser in the case was black, but I missed the mark. It’s more than the races of the people involved; if the crime is perceived as involving interracial sex, something snaps in people, suddenly they perk up.
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