The Alternate Reality That Fuels White America’s Fear

Ahmaud Arbery (courtesy of the Arbery family)

As a reporter who covers sexual violence, I believe there is a victim blaming that takes place in this country that is even worse than the mythical power that mini-skirts have to make men lose control of their actions.

It is an irrational fear of black people so normalized that grown men could grab weapons and begin chasing a jogger, ultimately to his death, as if it were normal.

That Gregory and Travis McMichael thought Ahmaud Arbery “resembled a suspect” in a string of neighborhood break-ins only makes the February killing that much worse.

Not simply because local police have just one report of a theft in that period, of a gun from an unlocked truck outside the McMichaels’ home. Or because, as a retired police officer, Gregory McMichael was professionally trained to de-escalate threats real and imagined.

But because to many white Americans, being black and “resembling a suspect” are synonymous and they — we — won’t admit it. The crime isn’t important, or even necessary. What’s important is never questioning the collective fear.

That way we can perpetuate an alternate reality, in which black Americans have systemically terrorized white Americans, not the other way around. That way we never have to think about how much black people fear us. That way even senseless violence makes sense, especially if someone is standing their ground.

What type of ground is this, exactly, if it so easily threatened? Quicksand?

As comedian and author D.L. Hughley says, the most dangerous place for black people is white people’s imagination. It is a place teeming with such cowardice and paranoia that the color of someone’s skin can be an actual trigger warning.

Thankfully, not everyone with that imagination has access to or picks up a gun. But there are plenty of other manifestations of white people’s racism, racial profiling and feelings of superiority that are played out daily. They seem innocuous but are not, and we have no hope of exiting this particular circle of Hell unless we admit to them.

That includes you too, the “good” white liberals who know that black lives matter but who nevertheless remark — out loud or to yourselves — how “eloquent” a black person is when speaking about even the most mundane topics.

Who drop someone’s skin color into an anecdote when it’s absolutely irrelevant, simply because dark-skinned people are anomalous in your everyday life.

Who complain about low-quality supermarkets in neighborhoods you’re “gentrifying,” rather than acknowledge what it means to live in a food desert. (And in my Nashville neighborhood, who insist on using the term “murder Kroger,” knowing full well it refers to a recent past when white people rarely ventured into the area or worried about the wellbeing of its residents.)

These are just the most superficial items on a list that could — and does — run on and on and on.

For millennia white people have been taught that we are “naturally” better, smarter, more moral than, well, everyone. So “naturally” we deserve better food, better schools, prettier and safer streets; health, wealth and (even human) property. But there is nothing natural about social hierarchies built upon arbitrary amounts of melanin.

To admit that means to move through the world less unquestioningly, and unquestioned; to acknowledge that so much of what we have comes from longstanding inequities we willfully ignore. If we aren’t inherently more intelligent, upstanding or deserving, then yes, we have to rethink our notions of everything from history and education to poverty and justice. Especially justice.  

The McMichaels didn’t say they went after Ahmaud Arbery because they thought he resembled a deadly serial killer. They thought he stole some stuff.

In the alternate reality, the value of their actions was greater than the value of a human life; officials paid to uphold the law even said so. Because when enough people believe in an alternate reality it becomes actual reality.

But in every reality, Ahmaud Arbery is dead and we can’t promise other black and brown people that they won’t die or get hurt jogging, walking, simply existing alongside us.