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Is There an Unreasonable Fear of Black Men?
When viral videos of conflicts between blacks and law enforcement officers, blacks being harassed by white women comedically known as “Karens,” or blacks being criminally profiled by overzealous white males are released, I make it a point to say as little as possible – especially on social media.
Generally, it’s very difficult to know what ensued and render judgment on what happened – and what should happen to achieve “justice” with minimal information provided in a 15-, 20-, or 25-second video clip. The Rodney King debacle should’ve taught us as much (but didn’t). Additional evidence is needed to help contextualize the incident for a better understanding of what exactly occurred and then, what should or shouldn’t happen to the relevant actors going forward. Ideally, prudence would dictate patience until supplementary evidence is made available before people dispense their verdicts and punishments.
That brings me to the recent case of Ahmaud Arbery.
For a number of reasons, the reactions to this case have been noticeably different than previous cases of what’s too easily pigeonholed as racially abusive interactions between blacks and whites. Predictably, the episode has divided conservatives and progressives. But this case has also divided black conservatives and white conservative; white conservatives and white conservatives (seen on social media), and black conservatives from other black conservatives. The same can’t be said about internal divisions between progressives because they uniformly believe that systemic racism is the omnipotent, omnipresent force that thwarts, hunts, and kills American blacks out of obligation to maintain white supremacy.
What’s behind this diversification of internal reactions among conservatives won’t be investigated here. Instead, I want to address David French’s recent opinion about what he claims is responsible for the killing of black men.
In Time magazine, French argues that “unreasonable fear” is why black men are being killed in America. Unlike an earlier piece in The Dispatch where French detailed a very well-reasoned case against Travis and Gregory McMichaels and their justification for following, confronting, and killing Arbery, here he claims that racially unjustified shootings of black men, mostly by cops, reflects America’s guilt for reinforcing the association of fear with black men.
After a brief list of examples of police-involved shootings – including the Trayvon Martin case (in which George Zimmerman was not a cop but an overzealous leader of his neighborhood watch program), French claims a sizable portion of the country – like the cops in the examples he cites, shares the view that black men unjustifiably represent “outsize perceptions of threat and danger.”
Is this really the case? Does there exist an unreasonable fear of black men that prompts itchy trigger fingers among (white) Americans?
David French thinks so. He says,
[T]here are Americans who would never pick up a weapon and try to track down a black man running on the street–or follow a young black man on a rainy night–but they understand and sympathize with those who do.
He continues,
I realized that all too many of these cases carried with them a dreadful double injustice. There was the awful death itself. Then there was the public declaration that there was something right about the alarm and even terror that triggered deadly violence.
It’s that second injustice that helps perpetuate the cycle of violence. It teaches a new American generation that when black men do even small things, then there is a reason to grab a gun–and even to fire that gun. The battle for hearts and minds must continue. It must be relentless and urgent–until at long last there is no real market for rationalization. After all, there is no reason a walk through a neighborhood at night [that]… should create in any American that terrible and fatal sense of unreasonable fear.
Is this true?
Granted, there are some who are guilty of this accusation. Some in this contingent are also legitimately racist. But is this group large enough to slander with broad strokes enough Americans for this accusation to be true by default?
Ultimately, I think the answer is found with French’s strategic but disingenuous use of the word “unreasonable.”
At this point in his journalistic career, David French has reached the point where he may have a say in the titles of his columns that are published in traditional news and commentary outlets.
In regard to this article, for argument’s sake, let’s say he did. If so, the title and a significant portion of his thesis is deliberately misleading.
French only cites obvious cases in which law enforcement officers acted too impulsively (Philando Castile) or in the case of Walter Scott, immorally. But he deliberately ignores a number of other cases that grabbed national attention in which the black men who were shot posed risks to the officers involved including:
- Michael Brown, who robbed a convenience store and tried to grab the gun of an officer that confronted him and a companion. The officer involved (Darren Wilson) shot Brown in self-defense – actions that were later legitimized by a DOJ investigation; and
- Stephon Clark, who matched the description of a man vandalizing cars in his neighborhood when officers were called. After a search and pursuit (which included a police helicopter), Clark tried to evade arrest. When confronted by officers, Clark ignored orders to submit, turned toward cops with what looked a gun (a cell phone), and was shot dead.
Additionally, the Trayvon Martin case isn’t so easily dismissed as another instance of an unreasonable threat. Let’s not forget why George Zimmerman followed Martin to begin with, and why a neighborhood watch was even necessary in the community where the deadly altercation took place.
A fact that wasn’t shared too widely was that the gated community where Zimmerman lived had been robbed – at least eight times in the 14 months before the altercation. Several of the victims and witnesses described the thieves as being young black men, and unfortunately, Martin fit that description. I’m not defending Zimmerman’s actions on that fateful evening. However, one should be able to understand the frustration, insecurity, and desire of community residents to stop thieves from taking that which is not theirs.
But more to the point. French intentionally ignores what gives life to the regrettable stereotype with which he finds fault: the sad and frustrating fact that 2 to 3 percent of the black population commits a disparate percentage of violent crime.
I’m not defending the vigilantism of the McMichaels which led to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and I’m certainly not saying that Arbery deserved to die.
I’m simply noting what is obvious to those who value intellectual honesty: that the criminal activity of a disproportionately small subset of black men negatively stigmatizes and stereotypes all black men – myself included – as dangers and public threats. To acknowledge that truism is heterodoxy in our current cultural climate where subjective feelings and white guilt are prioritized over data-driven facts. This criminal stereotype in many occasions (but not all), is a contributing factor in the deaths of black men as are the guns used by cops (or wannabe proxies) to shoot them.
That this small, racial demographic subgroup reinforces criminal stereotypes is an important aspect as to why people reach the conclusion that black men menace society. I have a personal file of more than 200 stories that show the breathtaking variety of black criminality and 99 percent has absolutely nothing to do with people holding an “unreasonable fear.” As a matter of fact, it’s precisely because of these stories, again, which stigmatizes all blacks, that mainstream America –– including other blacks –– possess the functional and in many cases, life-preserving generalization that black men are threats to public safety.
Sadly, FBI statistics reinforce this categorization. In 2018, blacks accounted for 37 percent of reported violent crimes, 54 percent of robberies, 53 percent of reported murders, and 89 percent of crimes committed against other blacks. Just this past weekend alone, 39 people were shot and ten others were killed in Chicago even though stay-at-home orders are still in place.
Additionally, when it comes to interracial crimes, blacks killed more whites (69 percent) than whites killed blacks (31 percent). One would never know this if one had to rely only on media reporting.
Jesse Jackson once lamented about walking and hearing footsteps behind him only to be relieved that they weren’t black. He said,
“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see someone white and feel relieved.”
He also expressed his observations about black criminality in ghetto areas saying,
“This killing is not based upon poverty; it is based upon greed and violence and guns.”
Considering that these examples, buttressed by painful statistics that unfairly and overwhelmingly tarnish black men, can we still call this feeling “unreasonable?”
French says that “hearts can change.” No question they can – and they have. Despite legislative victories resulting from the civil rights movement, it wasn’t until American hearts changed that our country was able to heal and move forward.
But I think French lays the contemporary burden of responsibility to change upon the shoulders of mainstream America. This means that white people bear the overwhelming obligation to fix this problem. There certainly are white people who lack moral self-awareness and are in definite need of a spiritual self-assessment to change what compromises principled thoughts and behaviors.
But excluding blacks from contributing to this moral renovation is paternalistic and reinforces notions of black helplessness and inability. French won’t say what I’m about to say for whatever reason(s) and many whites are afraid to say what I’ll say because of the swift “cancel culture” repercussions that accompany any recognition of black humanity (on equal terms with their counterparts), black obligation, and free will. So, I’ll say it. White people who agree with me but who nevertheless choose the pragmatic path to self-preservation can thank me later.
If hearts are going to change, we’re compelled to mention what blacks can and should do to diminish this “unreasonable fear”: immediately resume self-policing of the pernicious and counterproductive behavior in black communities. This includes vociferous and consistent condemnation of blacks who do their level best to keep negative stereotypes alive, full stop.
Jesse Jackson also said,
We’ve got the power right now to stop killing each other . . . There is a code of silence, based upon fear. Our silence is a sanctuary for killers and drug dealers. There must be a market revolt. The victim has to rise up.
Blacks do have the power but they refuse to use it.
Blacks in the post-civil rights era have stopped calling balls and strikes when it comes to self-destructive and self-debasing behavior, and it’s exactly why we have so much of it. It’s no secret that once you destigmatize bad behavior, bad conduct is normalized. This behavior then became associated with black culture, being “authentically” black, and so on. When blacks sit silently as the violent statistical minority abuse and destroy our reputations, then attempt to rationalize this humiliating behavior – it becomes legitimized, and blacks as a whole become associated with it.
So, if blacks continue to sit silently and withhold disapproval, then they can’t complain when mainstream America reacts accordingly.
It bears repeating – all of this in no way condones what the McMichaels did or that Arbery (and more recently, George Floyd) deserved to be killed. It’s the larger, deliberately misleading narrative that I’m concerned with.
Blacks could stop this almost overnight if they wanted to. But they don’t, because some religions still require human sacrifice and black identity politics is one such religion (cult, actually).
After what our black ancestors went through to gift us this freedom, it’s unquestionably unfortunate that we’ve allowed ourselves to shame our reputations and their sacrifices.
David French choosing the phrase “unreasonable fear” in proximity to black men isn’t correct. A more accurate term would be “unfortunate fear.”
Blacks holding themselves accountable demonstrates self-love and self-respect and ultimately shows people that they needn’t fear blacks.
Published in Culture
Since I posted a bit of a smart-alecky response, I’ll post one where I tone that down.
First, thank you for writing this. I’m white (bald but no cool scar like my avatar). So I approach any discussion like this with caution. I’m afraid that no matter what I say it will come out the wrong way or be perceived as such. I’m also ashamed at the wealth of opportunities I’ve squandered let alone took advantage of, when there are a lot of people that haven’t had them.
There aren’t any easy answers to this, but it does seem like the solution is something that has to come from within the community. Even then it won’t be easy to turn around. But no one involved in the things dragging the community down is going to listen to or care what a middle-aged fat white man thinks. I’m not their savior. They could be their own though. And I think that’s the chance their ancestors were fighting for anyway.
My brother lives in one of the outer suburbs of the Twin Cities, and he just posted a photo of smoke rising from St. Paul visible against the setting sun. The “protests” are now out of control riots and looting, and are spreading across the Twin Cities.
Part two.
We moved out of the ghetto and into a white working class ethnic neighborhood. That neighborhood was also into the process of changing: more ethnicities mixed together, but still white. This was one of the southside neighborhoods that MLK marched through (about 20 years before we got there). White, but not ruch. White, but, at least among my cohort, post racial Gen X. MLK had literally changed the world; we all knew the dream and shared it. I knew older people who were prejudiced, but no racists (like David Duke or klansmen etc). The prejudice that existed was ignorance from a past age.
That, and the situations described in the OP. We weren’t in the ghetto anymore, but we were ghetto adjacent. Clear lines (Western Avenue) separated white from black (and Mexican) the same way that clear lines separated Irish, Italian, Polish. On the other side of Western started the infamous Englewood neighborhood. We knew what happened there. Most of the crime in the city, that’s what. Crime. Criminals. Single parents. Rough kids. Abuse. Hookers. Pimps. Gangs. Drugs. Stabbings. Shootings. Formerly beautiful neighborhoods and buildings run down to dilapidation.
Aside from carryover prejudice, these real maladies and our proximity to it made a certain amount of fear (caution, more like it) reasonable. To be sure, we knew that this was related to generations of real racism and oppression, but to the extent that anyone in my neighborhood cared about causes, no one thought it was genetic or anything like that you might hear from a nazi. Honestly, the why didn’t matter. What mattered is how close it was to us and how it could actually affect us, family and friends. In real material ways, not hypothetical ways they imagine out in the suburbs.
Our caution was real. And warranted. It wasn’t about skin color. I’m serious: MLK literally changed the world. We shared the dream. To the extent we cared about reasons, it was cultural. And being from the ghetto myself, I could tell the difference between a ghetto degenerate to fear and a regular dude out in the real world with family and things to live for. Others, with less experience, weren’t as discriminating as I could be. So your mileage may vary, as the saying goes. So that “reasonable” part us real. The problem is most people aren’t reasonable.
Sometimes the point of displaying a firearm is to not have to use it. A handgun with defensive loads might be more useful if it came to shooting, but an AR may look more intimidating, rightly or wrongly.
They certainly were socially distanced.
Thanks so much for writing this, Derryck.
Paging @jameslileks. Post of the Week, stat!
A child’s instinctive reactions are based on the parents’ accumulated data. Kids react to parental reactions.
It’s how children learn basic survival and why you shouldn’t freak out over minor (or even major) injuries. They learn from how you react.
(And why you should be careful the purpose of your signals are… don’t virtue signal with your children’s safety feature)
That’s an assumption in a vacuum.
What about young, inexperienced people needing to have what may end up being survival skills before they’ve had the time and experience to develop them rationally?
I see that Stina made the same point.
The counter to that seems to be to argue that Arbery initiated at least the physically-violent part of the “confrontation” by running at them and grabbing for their weapons. As I recall, that’s what ultimately got Michael Brown killed too. And talk of “unarmed black teenagers” makes it sound like Michael Brown wasn’t 18 years old, 6-foot-4, and 292 pounds while trying to grab a cop’s gun.
I was walking through Times Square on a late Sunday afternoon about 10-12 years ago when a couple that looked to be in their late 60s and coming out of one of the matinee theater shows passed in the other direction, and the woman dropped her glasses case. A black man who was standing on the sidewalk saw it, picked it up and walked up from behind to try and give it back to her, and her reaction was akin to the crowd on Fifth Avenue after the aliens destroyed the Empire State Building in “Independence Day”.
The man trying to do something nice in broad daylight was insulted, and said so. And I really didn’t blame him for being insulted. So yes, there can be an unreasonable fear out there.
That said, the media feeds the narrative in the Minneapolis case that it has to be 100 percent about race, where we’ve just gotten through the Justine Ruszczyk-Mohammad Noor shooting and trial where the racial identity roles were flipped. Putting the two together, you might make a case that the problems with training at Minneapolis PD might be systemic, where the potential blowback onto local residents can cross all racial boundaries. But that wouldn’t fit the current preferred narrative (nor does the fact that Amy Klobuchar apparently declined to prosecute the officer at the center of the George Floyd incident, Derick Chauvin, in connection with a police shooting 14 years ago. She may have been totally justified in doing that, based on the available evidence in 2006. But a Google news search for the past 24 hours turns up a remarkable lack of curiosity about Klobuchar’s actions as DA in that case from the national media, who had no problems going back almost instantaneously 3-4 decades on Mitt Romney or Brett Kavanaugh, and telling the world how their actions as teenagers defined who they were as adults).
Bingo
Fear is, by design, always unreasonable.
There is, in all of us, a fear of the stranger who fall into one or more of the following categories:
1.) male
2.) young —between the ages of 15 and 35.
Everything else—race, social class, appearance/clothing, behavior—is an add-on. So if Jesse Jackson was walking down a dark street (darkness is also a primal fear, by the way), heard footsteps behind him and, concerned with the possibility of attack, turned his head and saw…a group of old women? Their race would be completely immaterial.
Do we all have good reason to be afraid of young men? Of course—statistically speaking, throughout time and space, young men have proven themselves to be more dangerous than babies and children, women and old people. This is why young men are more often the victims of violent crime as well as the perpetrators of it—two of Baltimore’s most recent murder victims had, themselves, been convicted of attempted murder.
The same aggressiveness that leads young men to be disproportionately represented among violent criminals puts them in the majority of protectors. Channelled, disciplined and trained appropriately, they are the soldiers, police officers and firefighters (or, for that matter, the friends, uncles, dads and neighbors) who will risk their lives to rescue the rest of us.
As I’ve said elsewhere, it is possible both that there was some reason that justified the officer kneeling on the neck of a handcuffed suspect, though I’ll admit, I can’t imagine what that might be. It is also possible that the officer in question was a bigot.
What is most likely, however, is that the Minneapolis police department —all of whose personnel have been hired and supervised by overwhelmingly liberal politicians— has a problem in how it selects, trains, leads and/or disciplines its officers. The evidence for this—again, so far, assuming things are as they seem—is that a Minneapolis police officer used force against a handcuffed suspect that resulted in that suspect’s death. (I have read that the suspect was arrested for a “non-violent” crime: this is immaterial). But additional evidence, and evidence that argues against the “Minneapolis cops are American cops and American cops are violent bigots” thesis—is that a black immigrant Minneapolis Officer, Mohamed Noor. shot and killed an innocent and, as it happened, middle-aged white woman a mere year and a half ago.
If I were in charge of Everything, I would suggest that police agencies knock off the implicit bias training, which has been a demonstrable failure, and replace it with use-of-deadly-force training. Police officers are uniquely empowered to deploy force against American citizens on behalf of the government. The elected politicians who oversee American police officers are responsible for hiring and training young (mostly) men (mostly) to do this professionally and, yes, reasonably.
It does.
When anyone brings up the lasting damage done to black Americans by slavery and Jim Crow when excusing violent riots, I am inclined to point out that there is an extremely thin line between “defective” people and “damaged” ones. Either way, the assumption is that black people are incapable and pitiable, rather than…well, fully human .
Question: Has anyone ever actually named the SDS radical who said it? I always see it stated as you did, Paul.
Hahaha. Yes he can!
That’s the crux, right there. Since the late 60s, the white left has been trying to expunge and distance themselves from the psychological feelings of racial guilt. All forms of diversity and racial preference programs that prioritize membership in protected (and expanding) racial groups over actual ability to succeed are evidence of that. And even in an era when the country is the least racist it’s been, the left has convinced blacks, and younger, dumber white Millennials and the iGen crowd, that the sin of ‘white privilege–– like you said, being white–– hasn’t been absolved.
And oddly, this is the *same* kind of racism that characterized post-slavery America, vis-a-vis, blacks.
In any case, they’re not after justice. The white left is–– and has been using blacks since the black power era–– as proxies for vengeance. If that’s not sad enough, think about this: most blacks don’t know or refuse to admit that the white left doesn’t accept blacks; it simply tolerates them for utilitarian purposes of challenging and destroying ‘the system’. And many blacks are paid well to do so.
Thanks for your input. We’ve all squandered opportunities, regardless of color. It’s part of the human condition, imo. But to your point, you’re exactly right. The only people that can redeem blacks, beside the good Lord himself, are blacks themselves. Blacks are literally in control of getting married, raising kids within marriage, teaching their children to respect authority; that jail is for criminals and losers, not a rite-of-passage for street cred; not aborting their babies, refusing to vote Democrat because of the party’s unwillingness to grant them access to better education and economic opportunities; rejecting self and cultural immolation via reductive behavioral patterns; embracing religion as a guide to a virtuous life, etc. etc. After doing that, then blacks can talk about or examine if and where racism still thwarts black progress and if so, what can be done through internal/external means to root it out.
But until then…
Van Jones had an interesting statement on CNN, referring directly to the Central Park incident that went viral over the weekend, but also relating to just exactly who has an unreasonable fear of black men, and how they try to hide it with liberal virtue signaling:
Jones hasn’t stopped being a man of the far left, but it does show the growing divide between those in that camp and the crony-capitalist Hillary types, who value blacks for the votes but prefer to maintain their distance otherwise. The left-right split’s more over total government control vs. ending the cycle of government dependency.
I read this and I nod along in agreement, but then I think that if my white lefty friends saw me agreeing with it, they’d call me racist. How did that happen?
I think they already do teach “use of deadly force” training, and have for decades.
I learned a very important lesson from reading a Larry Elder book nearly two decades ago. In it, he mentioned an incident in a movie theater where some Black people were making noise and being a bother to the other patrons. He said the White people in the theater, who were mostly liberals, were all afraid to criticize the disruptive Blacks. Finally, some Black guy shouted for them to shut up, after which they stopped the bad behavior.
Elder was pointing out that many Whites are afraid to criticize Black people because they feel guilty about slavery, racism, poverty, etc… but he said that this lack of criticism only emboldens people to act out in worse ways because they know they will get away with it without condemnation. I had been acting in this way toward Black friends and strangers, so I immediately saw the light and began treating everybody like normal people. Treating two sets of people differently is akin to having a two-tier justice system, one for the rich and powerful, and one for everybody else. It leads to terrible outcomes.
I don’t know, sorry. A hasty internet search did not turn up the source.
I did read, years ago, an essay in which a self defense instructor (?) said that nearly all training is largely low-stress: classrooms, target ranges, etc, and that what is missing and badly needed is training in dealing with high stress situations so that through practice people develop mental habits for acting effectively and not forgetting what they were taught. Among his examples of pitfalls were the adrenaline of high speed pursuits and confrontations where the presence of firearms is suspected. (Didn’t somebody once summarize optimal learning as “read and listen, speak and write, practice practice practice”?) Take this with as many grains of salt as you wish because this is emphatically not in the least my area of expertise.
The sad part of this story is that blacks rioting, looting, and burning down buildings reinforces the criminal stereotype harbored towards them by others. People forget that MLK succeeded because of a non-violent approach. Black violence has never achieved anything.
Which, as usual, they never do on the other side:
Of course they do. But they do not seem to be teaching it particularly well.
The Maine Criminal Justice Academy is a high-stress academy (or at least, it was up until Wuhan made it virtual!). One of the entertaining features of having lunch there (for those of us who aren’t subjected to the stress!) is watching cadets—who look to be about fifteen years old—being suddenly “attacked’ by an instructor in the lunchline. The instructor attempts to take away the hard, rubber “gun” they carry in their holsters. They are expected to maintain control —of the “gun,” of the situation and of themselves.
The final “exam” is a fight with a highly skilled instructor. To pass, the cadet has to defend his or her own life using appropriate force, escalating where warranted and—this is the tricky bit—de-escalating when the attacker backs off. It’s an incredible thing to watch. I feel slightly sick and tense just thinking about it!
The departments are expected to ensure that defensive tactics (the all-purpose title for hands-on instruction in anything “fight” related) are addressed in in-service training. Since there are only so many training hours in a year, if you insert two hours of [useless progressive nonsense] you pinch the time that can be used for refreshers on use of force.
Most people imagine that what are known as hands-on arrests are a daily, or at least weekly, feature of the job. Not so. On average, I’d say that one or two arrests a year involve physically overpowering someone: most suspects comply with arrest. The exceptions are generally drunk, drugged, or deranged—and, by the way, this can make them more or less dangerous depending on what is on board.
If this is a subject that fascinates you, reading Lou Cannon’s Official Negligence, about the famous Rodney King incident and its aftermath will be instructive. Rodney King was almost certainly high on angel dust, whose properties include (along with whatever dubious pleasure the drug confers) both a hyper-adrenalized state and imperviousness to pain. So the normal methods available to the LAPD at the time, of controlling a large man man who was not complying with commands and lunging at officers… didn’t work. (I’d like to remind everyone here that Rodney King survived this episode. Somehow, people forget that.
A psychotic state induced by schizophrenia or one of its cousins can have more or less the same effect—even a small, female suspect can be extraordinarily difficult to take safely into custody.
As some of you will recall, I believe that Michael Brown was psychotic—meaning disconnected from reality and hyperadrenalized—when he encountered Officer Wilson in Ferguson, MO. Whatever the source of this problem, psychosis far better explains his behavior, and the dolorous result, than Wilson’s supposed “racism.”