If I said to you that last night I drove through a “bad
neighborhood,” what image would immediately pop into your mind about my stated
location? I believe with every fiber of my being that if you are white, the
image in your mind would contain one singular element with stark clarity – the
presence of multiple black males hanging out on the streets.
Sure, your mind’s eye would be collaged with graffiti,
trash, neon liquor store signs and bright marquees for payday loans. But, those
are just scenery in a drama where the starring role is occupied by dark skin
contrasted against “wife-beater” t-shirts and baggie blue jeans.
If we are being honest with ourselves, we can’t escape the
fact that we white men are terrified of black men.
And I think that, more than any other factor, is the heart
of our modern day prejudice and racism in America – and more – the singular
reason why so many white cops stop, frisk and kill black men. The cop on the
street doesn’t hate the black man, he isn’t repulsed by him – he fears
him. In fact, the cop fears the black
man more than he fears the possibility of losing his job or losing his freedom
if he puts a bullet in the black man’s head.
You can hear the fear in Darren Wilson’s testimony about
shooting Michael Brown. "I felt like a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan,” he
said in testimony. You can see and hear it in the cell phone video of Jeronimo
Yanez shooting Philando Castile. These white men were terrified of the black
suspects before them.
Juxtapose these two tragedies with what happened a few
years ago in Nevada with rancher Clive Bundy.
When you boil the entire standoff down to its essence you have a
situation where a bunch of white men in violation of the law and with guns were
allowed to go about their law breaking so as not to spark a volatile situation.
Even though they were armed – with some even taking up sniper positions – the
lack of fear on behalf of law enforcement was obvious.
To white cops, a white civilian with a gun is problem to
solve. A black civilian with a gun is a nightmare to wake up from.
We all learned about Nat Turner and his rebellion in school.
An angry slave and his followers took the law into their own hands and killed
dozens of white slave owners. We learned about it alongside thousands of dates
and facts and names of historical significance in High School. And then, many of us, simply forgot about it.
Or did we? Indeed, we forgot about the facts and the how’s
and the when’s, but did we forget about the visceral feeling – a black man
exacting revenge for mistreatment and abuse and enslavement at the hands of
whites?
I don’t think so. I
think many of us feel – at an almost reptilian brain level – the fear of that
revenge. We know that through our birthright and through perhaps our own
actions, we are guilty of that mistreatment and abuse of black peoples. And we
fear it. We fear the revenge, our comeuppance. We fear it because we are great
at it, exacting revenge. It’s part of our white American lore. Against Santa
Ana at the Alamo, Against the Germans in WW1 and the Japanese in WWII we were
hurt, but we can back stronger and vanquished our foe.
Won’t black people eventually seek revenge against us? For what
we’ve done or what our ancestors did? We would, if it happened to us.
And so, because of Nat Turner, and because of millions of
terrible abuses and mild slights later, we know the bank account of racism and
oppression is full. We live in fear of a
withdrawal that, truth be told, we would have made decades ago, if the shoe was
on the other foot.
No comments:
Post a Comment