Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle over a video of a woman walking the streets of New York and being catcalled by guys. Most of the catcalls were comparatively tame, though not all were, and the result was a predictable storm of attention on the Internet via Twitter and other social media, exactly as the video's producers — an outfit called ihollaback.org — intended. But then some things departed from the script.

First, Slate's Hanna Rosin noted that pretty much all of the guys pictured were lower-class blacks and Latinos. Where were the white guys? The video's producers said they just weren't able to get much good footage of them, for a variety of reasons. Whether, in the 10 hours of filming it took to produce their two-minute video, there just weren't enough white guys saying offensive stuff, or whether the producers just had bad luck or whether they edited out the white guys, the result was that they released a video about "street harassment" that was also, quite plainly, a video of minority men harassing a white woman. And whether or not it deserves the charges of outright racism and classism, or even comparisons toThe Birth of a Nation, that it got from some minority critics, that's indisputably what it is.

This raises two questions in 21st-century America. One involves diversity and multiculturalism: Different cultures and ethnicities have different ideas of what constitutes appropriate intersexual behavioral, and there's no particular reason why the standards of upper-middle-class white feminist women should set the norm for everyone. In the old melting-pot days, it might have been appropriate to say that minorities needed to be assimilated to traditional WASP standards of decorum — "civilized" or "elevated" in the idiom of the day. But we've long since moved past the notion that there is only one legitimate way to behave as an American. (WASPs, in fact, are now often portrayed as unpleasantly frigid, sexless, and over-controlled). And, that being so, it would be astonishing if the only place where WASP standards still continued to rule was in this particular area. Should it be a crime to say hello to a stranger? Are women so delicate that they need patriarchal protection simply to go out and about? And if so, what does that say about women's ability to function independently in the larger world?

Second, and more troubling, the notion of going after minority males for inappropriate behavior toward white women raises unsettling memories of Jim Crow. Emmett Till, for example, a 14-year-old black youth who visited Mississippi from his home town of Chicago, broke the local behavioral code by flirting with a white cashier while buying some bubble gum. A few days later he was kidnapped, brutally beaten, and fatally shot in the head. An all-white jury, presumably viewing Till's behavior as culpable, refused to convict his killers.

I feel sure, of course, that the makers of today's catcalling video didn't think for a moment about the Emmett Till case, and I am positive that they would not endorse the fatal lynching of the men they pictured. Nonetheless, it's worth noting that the history of controlling minority men's intersexual behavior in this country is closely intertwined with the history of lynching. Those who choose to get involved in this field need to be aware of that history, lest they unintentionally make things worse.

Certainly, based on this video, the call by some feminists to make "street harassment" illegal would have the effect of subjecting more minority males — already over-represented in the criminal justice system — to arrests, and to a criminal record that might haunt them for years in the employment market, producing more of what criminologists call the "disconnected." The victims of this effect, ironically, would include the minority women and children who often depend on these men for support. People are beginning to appreciate the pernicious role of the drug war in this regard; why add to the problem?

Nobody, of course, should face rude or threatening interactions when they're out and about, even on the mean streets of New York City. And some people would like it if we returned to the halcyon days of chivalry. But as a system, chivalry both drew distinctions between men and women, and imposed behavioral obligations on women as much as it did on men. In today's egalitarian society, it's hard to see how a system based on such distinctions and obligations can survive.

Likewise, in today's multicultural society, notions of appropriate interaction between the sexes can't be confined to the narrow spectrum found acceptable by mostly white upper-middle-class academic feminists. That said, perhaps we can find a way to encourage politeness without shaming or threats of punishment. It would be nice if we could. But a video designed to score cheap points on social media isn't going to help.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor, is the author ofThe New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself.

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