Is "lynch" considered a racist word?

Question

Let's say that for example, people thought Chris was a bad person and he killed many people. A group of people vote for Chris to be lynched. Race has absolutely nothing to do with this; it's because of Chris's actions. This is the context for the use in question of the word "lynch".

My friend says the term "lynch" is such a racially-loaded term that we should use the word "hanging" instead. He says that the word "lynch" carries specific connotations of racist violence.

Please English experts tell me your insight on this! Is it actually racist or is he going overboard?

Answer 1

Lynch by definition means someone was put to death without a legal process. It usually refers to death by hanging, but not necessarily.

Hang means hang to death by rope, legally or otherwise.

The word "lynch" in the U.S. is often associated with a history of extrajudicial killing of black people, usually by racist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan.

Whether the term "lynch" would be considered racist would depend on the context in which it was used. If the term was referring to a black individual in the U.S., it might be perceived as racially or historically insensitive.

See the Wikipedia page on Lynching in the United States for more information.

Answer 2

I would object on two points: one, the word lynch is not "racist" but rather "racially charged"; two, it's not a matter of its origins but of its later associations. I would still probably avoid the word - but to avoid dragging in confusing associations, rather than for fear of causing offence.

As has been pointed out by WS2, the term "lynch law" pre-dates the KKK, and the earliest victims were not black. That being said, the KKK and its actions have hijacked the popular conception of the terms, so when you use the word "lynch" most people will not think of "rough vigilante justice, followed by summary execution", but of "white-on-black murder". For most audiences in the early 21st century, this is likely to result in a good deal of sympathy for the person being lynched. If that was not your intent, you should use a different phrase.

There is also an unfortunate tendency for people, undergoing some criticism or societal disapproval, to compare themselves to victims of much greater historical injustices - think of Godwin's law, for example. Throwing around the term "lynching" too loosely - "I'm getting lynched here" - should be avoided.

Answer 3

It undoubtedly has historic and cultural connections to race, but I do not believe it is offensively racist.

The term lynch refers to what was known as Lynch law - described by the OED as:

The practice of inflicting summary punishment upon an offender, by a self-constituted court armed with no legal authority; it is now limited to the summary execution of one charged with some flagrant offence.

It is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of victims of lynch law were black. So the term lynch has racial connotations but I do not see why it should be considered offensively racist, or why it cannot equally be applied to a white victim of such.

A victim of Lynch Law, moreover, is not necessarily hanged nor, historically, even killed. The term is meant to cover any form of extra-judicial punishment, though I have never heard it used for anything other than hangings (or perhaps strangulations).

The OED is unsure about the etymology of lynch law, but proposes the following:

‘The origin of the expression has not been determined. It is often asserted to have arisen from the proceedings of Charles Lynch, a justice of the peace in Virginia, who in 1782 was indemnified by an act of the Virginia Assembly for having illegally fined and imprisoned certain Tories in 1780. But Mr. Albert Matthews informs us that no evidence has been adduced to show that Charles Lynch was ever concerned in acts such as those which from 1817 onward were designated as “Lynch's law”. It is possible that the perpetrators of these acts may have claimed that in the infliction of punishments not sanctioned by the laws of the country they were following the example of Lynch, which had been justified by the act of indemnity; or there may have been some other man of this name who was a ring-leader in such proceedings. Some have conjectured that the term is derived from the name of Lynche's Creek, in South Carolina, which is known to have been in 1768 a meeting-place of the “Regulators”, a band of men whose professed object was to supply the want of regular administration of criminal justice in the Carolinas, and who committed many acts of violence on those suspected of “Toryism”.’ (N.E.D.) The particulars supplied by Ellicott, together with other evidence, clearly establish the fact that the originator of Lynch law was Captain William Lynch (1742–1820) of Pittsylvania in Virginia. According to Ellicott, ‘this self-created judicial tribunal was first organized in the state of Virginia about the year 1776’; an article in the Southern Lit. Messenger (1836) 2 389 gives the date definitely as 1780.

Answer 4

The question is not the word itself, The real question is where the word first appeared in history and for what reasons that word was used for. Was the word used universally or for a specfic group of people? In www.vocabulary.com it says the word comes from a persons action that occured during a racialially motivated time. "When people take the law into their own hands and decide to punish a suspected criminal — or merely a person who's seen as challenging the status quo — the result can unfortunately be a lynching. Lynchings have most often involved hanging, especially during the period of racially motivated lynchings in the American South. The word lynching and its related verb, lynch, come from Captain William Lynch, who took control of imposing and policing order in Virginia during the Revolutionary War." In www.Wikipedia.com it says the word lynching came out in 1720 in a document that lynch claimed to be the author that later was declared a hoax by experts, apparently the word lynching was written by a racist authors in the 1970's for whatever reasons they had eventually became a word in the dictionary. So the word Lynching is actually a racist word, the word itself is by an author in the 1970's and all he did was create a divide between minorities and white people. So anyone sporting the name Lynch should not use it! If any person uses this word as a team name in any way then they are supporting racism, hundreads of slaves suffered or died under William Lynch. If a person uses this word in a loosely way then obviously they are ignorant to the definition of that word and where it came from, If you use this word and try to change it's meaning; he or she are not the originator of the word and are plagiarizing its definition if they are trying to change it, just go make up a word support it and build it!