Marcus Brown
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It is impossible to look at any form of news media without being constantly barraged with stories attempting to dissect and analyze the senseless deaths that can be seen as nothing but an epidemic. Turn on your television or open a newspaper, and you’ll see it. The needless loss of life has become an inescapable reality, and as much as I would like to close my eyes and cover my ears, I can’t help but see it all around me. Worse, I can see my own hypothetical place in it. Because if the recent news has taught me anything, it is that guilt is presumed for black males in this country. It seems our very existence breeds fear in others. Just look at the cases of Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Laquan McDonald in Chicago.
Reports released on Nov. 28 regarding the shooting death of Tamir, a 12-year old boy killed by Cleveland police, state the death was “objectively unreasonable.” The report “stands in direct contrast” to three previous expert reports made by Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy McGinty. The report indicates procedural failure in the moments leading up to the shooting, but most astounding is that the officer “shot the boy within 1.7 seconds of exiting the car.” The decision to shoot a 12-year-old black boy took fewer than 2 seconds to make.
McDonald, a 17-year-old African-American male, was shot by a police officer “who fired 16 shots in about 15 seconds.” The linchpin between these deaths is the fear for their lives allegedly felt by the responding officers.
Tamir had a pellet gun and Laquan had a knife. Neither killed anyone. They are both dead. Dylan Roof had a gun. He killed nine people in a historically black church. Robert Dear Jr. had a gun. He killed three people and wounded nine in a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic. They are both still alive. I’m quite certain my life would be in more danger reaching for my car insurance during a traffic stop than most white males would have who just shot up a church or a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Society is more afraid of what I might do than they are of what actual murders have done, and in a twisted way, it makes sense. Because when a white man commits a horrible atrocity, it is a departure from the normal. We see it in the scramble to identify causes of what could lead someone, who for all intents and purposes should have been the archetype of a productive member of society, to commit such horrible acts. The conversation becomes about mental health, gun-control laws, or any other scapegoat that could be mustered.
When a white man discriminately or indiscriminately kills innocent people, it is seen as an anomaly. He is instantaneously wrapped in the comforting narrative of the misunderstood, quiet loner who suffered a momentary lapse of judgment that was no doubt fueled by some failure of society to maintain the pristine facade afforded to him by nothing more than the pigment of his skin. Black men, on the other hand, must work their whole lives to earn even some semblance of a far more fragile facade. Furthermore, a sudden movement or innocuous item held in the wrong manner is enough to erase any social standing accumulated from years of meticulous self-curation. The question I find myself asking is, How do you combat fear when it isn’t based on anything tangible? Is it my responsibility to alleviate your fears when I’m scared myself?