MURDERS RECALL SAD TIME IN HISTORY

Larry Bright could date black women and still be a racist. He could
watch black women in pornographic movies and still be a racist.

We don't know, but he could be. To truly understand the dynamics of
racism is to understand that racism U.S.-style is fraught with
violence and sexual perversion. They didn't have to castrate black
men when they lynched them. But they did.

We do know Larry Bright finally got his wish last week. He pleaded
guilty to killing eight women in a deal that puts him in prison for
life. Bright is white. All of his victims were black. Repeatedly, we
have been told, authorities don't believe race motivated Bright's
killing spree. But that is to misjudge the power racism holds on the
national psyche.

The families of the victims, and the communities that supported them
most, set a standard for grace and restraint under circumstances that
could have been rife with racially tinged revenge fantasies. Their
reactions to Bright's deal to trade the death penalty for a lifetime
sentence stand in stark contrast to many police officers'
disappointment when Jarvis Neely received a life sentence, instead of
death, for the murder of Peoria Police Officer Jim Faulkner.

From the beginning, drug use trumped all in the hellish time Bright
roamed the streets, killing women, burning some of their bodies, then
crushing the bones. The one something every woman shared was a
history of drug abuse. The one something Bright shared with them was
a history of drug abuse.

But white women use drugs, also. White women trade sex for drugs. As
central Illinoisans know all too well, serial killers kill white
women, too. But Bright didn't confess to murdering white women and
burning their bodies in his mother's back yard. Not that he should
have murdered white women, too, but it would have been much simpler
to draw conclusions about the non-racial nature of his motives had
the list of victims been a little more racially integrated.

Bright could have sought out black women because he was steeped in
any number of racial-sexual stereotypes that still haunt the culture.
We don't know. But we do know Bright jaywalked racial boundaries in
ways unusual and unexplored for a serial killer.

Just as certain stereotypes about black men's sexual prowess refuse
to die, certain stereotypes about black women and their sexuality
haunt the cultural underworld. A common misperception is that black
women are more available, less inhibited, more savage, even when
black prostitutes are compared to white prostitutes.

Another deals in complicated areas of comparisons, contrasts and
values. White womanhood represents something too pure, too chaste,
too worthy to subject to compromising, denigrating positions. But
black women represent the opposite; therefore, predators are
justified in using them up, burning them, throwing them away.

The culmination of Larry Bright's case calls for a short black
history lesson. For much of this country's history, dating, marriage
and sex between the races were illegal in most states, taboo
everywhere. Except when a white man chose to take a black woman, by
force or otherwise.

Historically, black women could not cry rape and expect to be heard.
Black women were supposed to be there for the taking. White women, on
the other hand, were off limits to black men. Whether Bright realizes
it, his journey to hell helped dredge up deeply ingrained cultural
memories about the worth of black life in the past - and newly formed
hurts and fears about the worth of black life today.

That is partly why, before Bright's arrest, 400 to 500 people showed
up at two unprecedented town hall forums demanding that authorities
find the killer. They called on the rest of us to see the victims as
real women, loved and valued every bit as much as a Nicole Simpson or
Natalee Holloway.

A coalition of social service agencies responded also, creating
Rahab's Window, a refuge at the South Side Mission for women on the
street who believe they are in danger late at night. City of Refuge
Worship Center, the church that helped organize the town hall
meetings, created a special center, scheduled to open later this
month, to help women and men reclaim their lives from substance abuse
and incarceration.

Larry Bright's life sentence should not be the final chapter in his
life - or in his victims' deaths. We cannot change what we don't remember.