Abstract
By weaving literature, film, popular culture, and historical moments, I trace the historical pattern of white terror from nineteenth century lynching and rape to twentieth century mass murder and violent civil rights opposition to twenty-first century police brutality, all of which has engendered racial fears for Black men, Black women, and Black children, and I examine the effects of Black fear on the Black psyche, the Black body, and the Black family. Developing a new framework by which to read the uncanny operations of white supremacy and the new Black horror genre’s engagement with the inner/outer workings of white racism, my concept of horrifying whiteness offers an avenue for Black resistance by disrupting the centuries-old whiteness as innocence and blackness as culpability narrative; and my concept of crippling fear versus empowering fear offers an opportunity to probe the advantages/disadvantages of Black fear. I utilize horror films and tropes to address the theatricality of white violence, and to discuss how race figures into cinema which has not only reinforced racist notions about Blackness, but has also functioned as a generator of white violence. I show how Black artists who utilize the horror aesthetic counter monstrous depictions of Black people by reversing white hegemonic narratives and applying horror tropes to white supremacists. Ultimately, my project uses horror as a means of defamiliarizing white innocence and spotlighting Black fear as well as examining its impact on Black Americans.