osewalrus

While many people were angry/horrified to see a black man at a Seattle Coffee Shop get the police called on him and told to "move along" when he was there as part of his job as a court appointed supervisor of visitation rights subject to supervision, a number of people insisted that this was totally OK. As the article author notes, the academic term for this sort of defensive denial is "white fragility."

https://www.seattletimes.com/…/i-just-got-treated-to-a-wh…/…

There is a very deep level of projection and defensiveness by some. This is a social problem that will, sadly, take a great deal of time and effort to address. And it requires a systemic approach. It is not as if black people (and black men in particular) can somehow make themselves appear "less threatening" to white people determined to see a threat. As this story illustrates, some people will construct elaborate alternative realities that actually contradict the acknowledged facts agreed upon by all participants.

Addressing this problem is made more difficult by the fact that there are those who profit from nurturing a sense of grievance on the part of white people. Those interested in creating a world where "each may sit beneath their vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid" must be part of the solution by highlighting such prejudice and pushing people to think twice before calling 911 because seeing a black person makes them nervous.

Please note the first priority is to make these people feel uncomfortable about calling 911. We'll deal with the underlying racist problem of finding black people (especially black men) "scary" separately. It is easier, and sadly of higher priority, to treat the symptom of calling 911 than the underlying disease of cultural conditioning. Rather than trying to cure racism, let us focus in the first instance on getting these people to not want to be "that person" on social media.