As citizens of this global world, presumably we carry the inalienable rights to live and to be merry for the enjoyment of our few days under the sun.
But some rights, like the right to fully participate in a nation, are more intangible. The right to fear is one of them.
The spectrum of human emotions is wide, but some believe our thousands of varied feelings all boil down to two sentiments: love and fear.
We each actively pursue some form of love in our lives. We are taught to love our parents, siblings, and relatives, despite the burdens that extended families can bear on our sanity.
In the pursuit of love in their adult lives, people search for mates with compatibility, empathy, and sometimes passion. Some are perfectly content going the world alone and thus seek companionship instead.
Whatever the case, we all desire some social connection.
Therefore, if the family unit isn’t close-knit or lacks stability or we too often find ourselves in solitude, we question: why us? Why us that we could not be so loved as we understand it to be the norm?
The right to love is unquestionable.
Love is easy.
Fear, on the other hand, is more complicated.
While people are supposed to love and have love thrust upon them, society sanctions the right to fear for some and not others.
In the multiple killings by white police and white civilians against young black men in the United States, the right to fear stands at the heart of the conflict. Whose right to fear is an underlying issue that rarely comes to the fore.
After a murder, the white officer or white civilian, usually male, states that his use of deadly force was justified. He feared for his life or the life of another white person at the scene.
This is claim that Officer Darren Wilson made after landing six bullets in black teenager Michael Brown’s body. An autopsy revealed that one bullet plunged into Michael’s head and another pierced the top of his skull.
It is hard to understand why Officer Wilson feared Michael Brown and why he necessitated the use of deadly force. And let me explain why.
Officer Wilson is a trained police officer, meaning he went through a rigorous physical conditioning process in the police academy. At the time of his encounter with Michael Brown, Officer Wilson was armed with at least one weapon, he was safely in the confines of his police vehicle, and he was accompanied by a fellow officer who possessed the same training credentials and weaponry.
How then, could Officer Wilson with his weapons, training, and in the protection of his police car, fear for his life in the presence of Michael Brown a teenager, who did not possess any weapons or combat training?
Though Officer Wilson had never met Michael Brown, why did he seem to think that Michael could end his life with his bare hands?
And that there was no other way to quell his fear but to shoot?
Why is “shooting to kill” the gut reaction for white police and white civilians interactions with young black men?
Is fear the actual emotion felt or simply a pretext to obscure the unjustifiable act of brutality?
Some people cannot understand why Michael Brown would fear Officer Darren Wilson and other armed whites. They view blacks as strong, physical, and intimidating and cannot empathize with them or envision the encounter from their vantage point.
Black fear stems from mistrust and a history of white violence against blacks.
It is marked by vignettes like that of Emmett Till, a young black teenager who in 1955 was kidnapped, beaten, tortured, and executed by two white men who were enraged that Emmett allegedly spoke to a white woman. (Both men were acquitted by an all-white jury.)
Knowledge of more recent murders of black men at the hands of whites—including the deaths of Errol Shaw, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, John Crawford, Jordan Davis, Eric Garner, Ezell Ford, and too many others—adds more grounds for a young black teenager like Michael Brown to fear an encounter with an armed white man.
Michael and his friend reacted as many people who feared would react, they ran.
In some cases, whites run too.
When U.S. officials from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management cornered Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy and his armed supporters for committing a crime—illegal grazing practices on subsidized public lands—they feared the group of rogue gun-toting civilians.
Bundy was a noted criminal who owed over 1 million dollars to the federal government. Though he encountered better treatment by U.S. officials than young men who had not obliterated the law.
Perhaps officials feared that the two groups would exchange a long stream of bullets until only a few men were left standing.
After fear, there comes a decision.
In the encounter with Cliven Bundy’s group, the police officers decided not to engage, but to retreat. Since the standoff, officers have not returned to reclaim the federal lands in order to allow them to rest in the interest of sustainability.
Why do U.S. police officers employ peaceful tactics with armed white civilians and not with unarmed black civilians? Why did Officer Darren Wilson choose to engage his gunfire on Michael Brown?
At some level, though it appears that white fear is validated more than black fear.
In many cases, the white man’s statement that he feared for his life is enough for a majority white jury and judge to vindicate a white murderer, to restore his right to life away from prison and judgment, to go scot-free with perhaps gunpowder residue but without lawful blood on his hands.
When blacks’ lives are ended prematurely, they are stripped of their voice, their right to speak for themselves. Their perspective, and also their fear, becomes null and void, overpowered by the narrative that their murderer who continues living is allowed to perpetuate.
But even if black victims were around to speak, their fear wouldn’t be valued in such a society anyway, as many blacks in the U.S. feel their voices of protest fall on deaf ears.
In countries like the U.S., a white superiority complex is alive and damaging. Whether consciously or subconsciously, whites feel superior to blacks—that their lives are more valuable. That they should hold the highest positions in corporations, in politics, in academia. That their children should enroll in better schools and have brighter futures. That is what they truly believe. And thus, to them, their fear matters more.
As individuals, we should all have a right to fear. But we must be mindful of how we react to that fear and how are reactions affect others.
At the structural level, protections are needed to ensure that black citizens’ right to fear is protected. At the very least, there should be police video and audio for all interactions with civilians.
But what is really necessary is to have black cops patrolling black communities. The reaction of fear to an animal might be to shoot. But reaction fear of people is to retreat or communicate. White U.S. police officers demonstrated this tactic in their treatment of white people in Cliven Bundy’s group, but do not extend this humanistic treatment to black citizens.
Authority should be rooted in respect and not in fear and violence.
