ARTICLES Reconceptualizing Historic and Contemporary Violence Against African Americans as Savage White American Terror (SWAT) Zoe Spencer 1 & Olivia N. Perlow 2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract This work seeks to challenge the benign language employed in the discourse surrounding historic and contemporary white violence, particularly against African Americans. In so doing, this work develops language that more adequately captures the genocidal social control mechanisms designed to create terror through the physical and psychological brutality of white violence. Specifically, this work introduces the theoretical construct of Savage White American Terror (SWAT) which we correlate to historic patterns of violent atrocities such as lynching to contemporary police violence against African Americans. Keywords White supremacy . Lynching . Terror . Terrorism . Violence . Police . African Americans The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. -Ida B. Wells Language, utilized as a powerful tool in controlling and manipulating individual and collective perception, has been essential in promoting conformity to the existing social order and power relations, and has thus been fundamental to the creation and J Afr Am St https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-018-9399-3 * Olivia N. Perlow o-perlow@neiu.edu Zoe Spencer zspencer@vsu.edu 1 Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Virginia State University, 1 Hayden St, Petersburg, VA 23806, USA 2 Sociology Department, Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N St. Louis Ave. LWH 2090, Chicago, IL 60625, USA