The Hate that Fear Produced

The basis for the acts of fatal interaction between members of the Black community and members of police agencies across the United States is fear. The fear is observable in the many Youtube videos showing police actions that end in unlawful and immoral behavior that at times ends in the death of the Black individual. Where does this fear come from? Well if we are to examine how the European used pseudo race science to justify turning Afrikans into property by dehumanizing them we will discover the roots of the fear.

Charles Darwin was an unapologetic white supremacist who re-enforced the idea that Afrikans were somewhere between an orangutan and a human. Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a German Zoologist and Darwinist who further expanded the negative propaganda masquerading as science when he wrote “Race and evolutionary theory” that lays out a piece of fiction that is truly despicable and far fetched saying; This “Great Chain of Being of Race" portrays an evolutionary chain running from monkeys to humans, in order of the racial and national preferences of the publishers. The heads pictured were supposed to represent, from top to bottom and left to right, "Indo-German, Chinese, Fuegian, Australian Negro, African Negro, Tasmanian, gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, gibbon, proboscis monkey, and mandrill."

 ( https://www.sciencesource.com/CS.aspxVP3=SearchResult&ITEMID=SS2636811)

The quest to establish wealth by securing vast resources from the Americas in the 16^th century by Imperialist European nations brought out through greed an ideology based on human phenotype thereby creating what we know today as “race”. All non European people were considered inferior, without culture or a history worth noting. Europeans needed a free labor workforce and Afrikans were selected to fill the need for the free labor in the Americas and millions of Afrikans were kidnapped and shipped to the New World to build and sustain the economic engine of Nations such as Spain, England, France and the Dutch. For Several hundred years slavery existed in the Americas and with the civil war slavery as it was practiced up until 1865 Afrikans endured horrors like no other peoples in the history of the world because at no time was a people removed from being human to that of a subordinate life form.

After the civil war is when the fear we see today began to take root. If the children of the Trans Atlantic Afrikan Holocaust were allowed to be equal in stature to the children of those who for hundreds of years robbed, raped and brutalized them would they at some point revolt and seek retribution for the atrocities set upon them? This type of thinking lurked in the minds of European Americans. That along with the pseudoscience of race sometimes called Eugenics evoked panic in the masses of white Americans they feared the genetic extermination of Europeans. Adolph Hitler took the idea of racial purity to the next level in his views on Aryan purity and used negative propaganda in the form of written articles and film to spread ideas of how Afrikans were closer to apes and were less than human. In the United States propaganda through film began in the earliest days of movie making. The Birth of a Nation (originally called The Clansman) is a 1915 American silent epic drama film directed by D. W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish. In this film Black men were portrayed as savages who lusted violently after white women, threatening the public safety of the entire nation and the KKK is portrayed as a force for good, just some well-meaning vigilantes responding to a crisis. The Birth of a Nation Motion picture was mandatory viewing for public school children in the United States up until the 1970s. Fear mongering and the displaying of false images of Black people is a major contributor to the climate of fear we see today in law enforcement. Couple the general fear that negative propaganda campaigns and false media imagery creates with the abuse of power that is pervasive in law enforcement today and it spells death for many Black people. Watch any video of the police interacting with Black men and you will see the fear they have. This fear stems from the myth of the supercriminal that posses vast strength and is armed with concealed submachine guns. You find that the male dominated police agencies feel the need to sadistically dominate and oppress the rights of Black women to the point of slamming them headfirst and poncing on them as if they were still chattel slaves without any rights at all. It is preposterous to say that America is the land of the free where all men are created equal as a matter of fact when the U.S. Constitution was enacted men and women of Afrikan descent were being held in bondage in great numbers for almost one hundred years afterward. In the age of information we exchange thoughts, ideas and evidence of corruption at light speed at the same time the false narratives find their way into people's minds by the same avenue.

The idea that skin color and facial features have anything to do with a person's character is one that will not go away anytime soon. It was established and perpetuated over the span of hundreds of years re enforced by the so called institution of education as well as the entertainment industry. When people that have believed their entire lives that Black people are inherently malicious, possess superhuman strength and have no regard for human welfare are placed in a community that is foreign to them among a people they see as having little to no worth and ask them to be the authority figures we arrive at the point we are today. Black people need to be policed by people that share a cultural connection with them in order to remove the fear thereby removing the fatal mistakes made on behalf of law enforcement. It is mostly fear that I see in the video evidence showing fatal interactions between law enforcement and members of the Black community. After fear its ego and white supremacist ideology that causes unlawful violence carried out on Black people. Fear is a powerful motivator and is no excuse for killing someone unjustly but when I hear law enforcement say that they were in fear for their lives because a Black person just happens to be Black it makes me shudder and shake my head in disgust and it is even more disgusting when regulatory bodies agree with the law enforcement person or persons. It is shameful that a Black mother or father has to be afraid when they themselves or their children are afraid to traverse public spaces because they do not know if they will be the victims of violence by the hands of those who take an oath to uphold the laws of the U.S. Constitution.

All too often the reality of life in the United States is in direct contradiction to the laws set forth by the document Americans hold as the pinnacle of liberty in a democratic society. If the Constitution of the United States was legitimate in its legislative dictates the United States would not hold Black people in peril every day of their lives. The United States Constitution is a beautifully written document that makes profoundly eloquent statements about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, Fairness and equality. It is a travesty that fear and false narratives give rise to racial bigotry and violent assaults upon a segment of society who have been underfoot of the American systems and structure from 1619 until today. Currently, the widely held erroneous belief by many Americans is the idea that we should not be as concerned with racial issues because we live in a color-blind, post-racial society. Although many Americans believe that race is no longer an issue, racism, structural inequalities and implicit bias continue have real consequences in the lives of Black Americans. Research reveals that the majority of Americans hold onto some degree of racial bias. This bias is the end result of the systemic negative propaganda created by early twentieth-century pseudo-science authors and sustained and even magnified by the educational system, entertainment outlets as well as modern literature building a tidal wave of fear in the hearts and minds of white Americans that crashes down on the heads of Black Americans with deadly results. As long as the common narrative about Black people in the United States underlying theme is that of them being people inclined towards violence and criminality the fear will trump ethical and just thinking and Black people will continue to be the people viewed as societies Big Bad Wolf. Now tell me again, Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?