Several years ago, I proposed to a Bible study group I was a part of that we spend a day working on a house with Habitat for Humanity. The group agreed to do so. One woman in the group volunteered to prepare lunch for the workers, but upon hearing where the house was, she said someone else would have to deliver the food because she did not feel safe in that “dangerous” black neighborhood.
Several weeks ago while walking in our neighborhood, a predominantly white neighborhood of modest but mostly owner-occupied, older homes, I passed a black man carrying a rake. He stopped to show me an address written on a scrap of paper and ask for directions. Shortly after he passed, a white man came running out of his yard to ask me, “What did HE want?” as if the black man did not belong in our neighborhood. Clearly, he feared this lone black man carrying a rake. Though I too am white, I have a greater fear of people like the white guy.
Four or five couples in the church I attend live in an active senior community about ten miles north of our church on the other side of Griffin, Georgia, where I live. The most direct route from their community to the church goes through several poor, mostly black neighborhoods. I was surprised to learn that they will go fifteen minutes out of their way in driving to and from church because they are afraid to drive through those black neighborhoods.
How can I explain to these people that their fears are irrational, that they make no sense? I usually respond with some weak and judgmental statement like, “That’s ridiculous,” getting in response only a blank stare. In retrospect I often wish I had told them that I worked on Habitat for Humanity houses in the poor black north side of Griffin nearly every Saturday for at least five or six years without once having cause to fear for my safety. I wish I had told them that several years ago I visited a potential Habitat client in a notorious project in Griffin with a black pastor friend who had been our town’s first black policeman. Sensing some anxiety in me, he said that he was in greater danger there than I and that there were white neighborhoods in East Griffin that were more dangerous to me than this project. I wish I had told my church friends that the toughest, meanest, cruelest people I have ever met were white and that there are poor white neighborhoods in Griffin I would be at least as reluctant to walk through alone as the neighborhoods between their homes and our church.
I have come to realize that these white people’s fears are not anomalous, that many, if not most whites in this country fear blacks and that these fears reinforce each other. Though I cannot cite statistics, the evidence is apparent. White people in this country own millions of handguns for protection. Protection from whom? Clearly, from black people. The wealthier among us live in gated communities for protection. Protection from whom? Clearly, from black people.
But the fact is that white people are six times as likely to be killed by other whites as by blacks.
In 2013, according to the FBI, white people killed 2509 other whites while blacks killed 409 whites. A Bureau of Justice Statistics study of homicides from 1980 to 2008 reveals virtually the same ratio of six white on white killings to one black on white killing over nearly 30 years.
So again the question arises, why do whites have such an irrational fear of blacks?
In recent months, white fear of blacks has been exacerbated by dishonest pundits and politicians and equally dishonest police spokesmen. These people say that the BlackLivesMatter movement in particular and black people in general are waging a “war on police.” Several months ago Charles Krauthammer declared that there was a war on police. Since then outcries of a “war on police” have come from Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, from The New York Post, from Fox Nation, and from Republican candidates for President.
Jerry Flynn, speaking for the New England Police Benevolent Association (police union), in a rant worthy of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth, venomously and untruthfully denounced protestors against police violence as “a horror show . . . an epidemic of lawless people trying to kill police . . . thugs [full of] hatred and animosity . . . a war on the streets.” Yesterday, Sheriff Butch Conway of Gwinnett County, Georgia, went far beyond even Flynn’s Orwellian rhetoric, referring to BlackLivesMatter and affiliated groups as “hate groups” and “domestic terrorists” that spread “police hatred” and contribute to the killing of police. Rather than pushing back with blatantly racist attacks on legitimate protests and protestors who are in solidarity with grieving people, would it not make more sense for the police spokesmen to join with the protestors in holding violently aggressive police accountable? Would that not significantly enhance the reputations of police?
The truth is that so far this year, only 32 police officers have been killed in the line of duty.. Of course, each of these deaths is tragic, but they hardly constitute a “war on police.” In fact, this year is on track to produce the second lowest number of police fatalities in 115 years. Meanwhile, so far this year the police have killed 829 people. If statistical trends through mid-year have continued, 170 of those were unarmed. At that rate, police will have killed 244 unarmed people and a total of 1168 people by year’s end. How many of the 32 police were unarmed? Police have access to protective armor such as face masks and Kevlar vests. How many of the civilians they shot had such protections?
Most frightening of all, 58% of the public believes that there is indeed a “war on cops.”White people like those I mentioned above fear black people, but consider the police their allies and protectors. Why? Admittedly, of the approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies in this country, the vast majority will have no law enforcement killings. Good for them. But the truth still remains that police officers kill at a far higher rate than any other group. It is likely that in 2015 police will kill more white people than blacks will kill. I don’t want to understate or in any way belittle blacks’ suffering at the hands of police; police kill blacks at 2.5 times the rate of whites and unarmed blacks at five times the rate of whites. But my focus here is the irrationality of white fears.
According to FBI statistics, which admittedly are far from complete, blacks killed 409 whites in 2013. This year police are on track to kill 580 white people—and nearly as many black people even though blacks make up only about 13% of the population. Let me restate that: 800,000 police are responsible for more killings of white people than are 42,000,000 black people. So again I ask: why do 58% of whites see police as allies and blacks as enemies?
That they see themselves as fighting a war and sometimes behave accordingly is not the fault of the cops alone; we too are responsible. We who are white have encouraged them to think that way. Our fear reinforces theirs just as theirs reinforces ours in a vicious cycle. We have been using the word “war” as a metaphor for decades, routinely speaking of “the war on drugs” or “the war on crime” or “the war on terror” as if these abstractions were discrete entities like nation-states to be seen on a map. Far too many of us simply expect cops to kill people, thinking that is their job. That attitude is part of the problem. What makes us think that killing should be a part of a cop’s job? Cops in other countries do not seem to regard themselves as being in a war; nor do they consider themselves as being hired to kill. In England and Wales, for example, police have killed an average of only two people per year for the past 24 years; those in Germany have killed 15 in the last two years; and those in Finland have killed no one in the last year but did shoot six rounds of ammunition. We have not just allowed but actively encouraged the police to see themselves not as those hired to “protect and serve” but as keepers of order, of discipline, as agents fighting against all that disrupts the established order.
I do not consider myself responsible for whites killing other whites or for blacks killing other blacks. But I do consider myself responsible for cops killing people of either race. And I consider you responsible as well. The police work for me and for you; they are our employees. They are in effect killing in our name. We need to make it clear that we will not stand for that. That we did not hire them to maintain order, to suppress disruption, to “enforce” the law, to fight some imagined “war” on our behalf, but as some of their mottos say, “to protect and serve.” Rather than fearing blacks who are rarely a threat to us, would it not make more sense for those of us who are white to join in solidarity with BlackLivesMatter and Dream Defenders in working to hold police accountable?