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"And you are lynching Negroes" (Template:Lang-ru; literally but at your lynching negroes) is a phrase known in several Eastern European and Southeast European countries (see below) referring to the use of the rhetorical device known as Tu quoque ("You, too") in political contexts.

The image of mobs in the United States lynching African American citizens was a part of the historical image of the United States recognized in the Soviet Union, but not widely acknowledged in the United States until recently.

The irony of this joke is that it wasn't just lynching that continued into the twentieth century in the United States. So did slavery writes Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas A. Blackmon in his book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America From The Civil War to World War II. The book, published in 2008, was reviewed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by journalist and author Harper Barnes.

The use of the phrase is traced to a Russian joke from the times of Nikita Khrushchev, about a dispute between an American and a Russian. There were several versions of the joke; one version from 1962 goes as follows: "The Voice of America asks the Soviet radio: 'Is it true that your shops are empty?' In three days the reply is given: And you are lynching negroes."

This joke at the expense of African Americans denigrates African American history.

Variants

Similar phrases are used in various languages of Eastern Europe, in different variants, often in reference to different jokes, albeit with the same idea.

• Template:Lang-sr
• Template:Lang-hr (Literally, "And what do you do to Negroes?")
• Template:Lang-pl (Literally, "And at your place, they beat up Negroes!")
• Template:Lang-cs
• Template:Lang-sk
• Template:Lang-hu (Literally, "And in America, they are beating up negroes")
• Template:Lang-bg (Literally, "And why do you beat the Negroes?")
• Template:Lang-bs
• Template:Lang-sl

See also

• Soviet propaganda

References

1. Interview with a Soviet emigrant
2. "СССР в мировом сообществе: от старого мышления к новому", Progress Publishers, 1990 p. 487 Template:Ru icon
3. Template:Ru icon "Your Letters", at Radio Liberty
4. Dora Shturman, Sergei Tiktin (1985) "Sovetskii Soiuz v zerkale politicheskogo anekdota" ("Soviet Union in the Mirror of the Politicial Joke"), Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd., London, ISBN 0903868628, p. 58 Template:Ru icon
5. ^ A record of a session of Bulgarian parliament Template:Bg icon
6. "Gdzie Murzynów biją albo racjonalizm na cenzurowanym" Template:Pl icon
7. "Nepoučitelný Topolánek" Template:Cs icon
8. "A pragmatikus szocializmus évtizedei"Template:Hu icon

• Lynching in the United States
• Political slogans
• Propaganda of the Soviet Union
• Racially motivated violence against African Americans
• Soviet phraseology