Opinion
The Racial Disparity of Fear
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
J ERRY F OSTER
Advertising Manager
L ISA L OVING
News Editor
H ELEN S ILVIS
Multimedia Editor
D AVID K IDD
Graphic Designer
M ONICA J. F OSTER
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ULIE K EEFE
S USAN F RIED
Photographers
The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
I
n the years after enslavement,
Southern Whites did all they
could to return to a manner of
slavery. No White “owned” a
Black person, but many Whites
behaved as if they did. Theoreti-
cally, Blacks were free to come
and go as they pleased, but if they
went to the wrong store, sat in the
wrong part of the bus, or failed to
yield narrow sidewalks to Whites,
they could expect a physical con-
frontation. All a White woman had
to do was cry “rape” for a Black
man (and usually the wrong man)
was beaten or lynched. Whites
expected deference from Black
people, and when they didn’t get
it, they demanded it with physical
threats or worse.
In the months after World War
II, 12 million soldiers returned
home. Seven percent of them –
nearly 800,000 Black soldiers –
got something less than a hero’s
welcome. Indeed, thousands of
Black World II veterans were beat-
en, often because these men
wanted the same rights at home
that they fought for abroad. Their
sense of dignity and equality
seemed to embolden the Ku Klux
Klan, which was responsible for
soldiers in uniform being pulled
off buses, beaten and shot. In
some cases, these soldiers had
their eyes gouged out; in some
cases they were castrated, tortured
and lynched.
Whites engaged in the writing of
Jim Crow laws that were imposed
on Blacks such as vagrancy laws
that made it possible to jail a
NNPA
C OLUMNIST
Julianne
Malveaux
Black man because he had no
money. These unequal laws made
it as easy to find a nearly free labor
market as it had in slavery. There
was no relief from this unfairness
until the late 1960s and early
1970s. And Whites attempting to
reinforce the myth of White supe-
riority by reinstituting the practice
car and confront them about their
loud music?
None of us of a certain age loves
loud music, but most of us know
how to close a window and toler-
ate it for a moment or two. Dunn
says he was afraid of teens playing
“thug” music. Those teens might
well have been afraid of him, just
as the World War II veterans had
been afraid of the KKK. Jordan
Davis and his friends might have
been as frightened as formers
slaves were, when they refused to
cross the sidewalk into the streets
so that Whites could go first.
Some of these Black folks ignored
their fear and attempted to exer-
cise their citizenship rights. Some
were lynched because they would
If Michael Dunn were so afraid of
Jordan Davis and his friends, why did
he get out of his car and confront
them about their loud music?
of deference found a Black popu-
lation less ready to defer, more
willing to engage the courts (and
in some cases the streets) in a
quest for equality.
When the myth of White superi-
ority does not work, too many
Whites hide behind their so-called
fear as a way force deference or
provide penalties for those who
will not engage in White people’s
fantasies. If Michael Dunn were
so afraid of Jordan Davis and his
friends, why did he get out of his
not defer to outmoded customs.
Gary Pearl could be Michael
Dunn’s evil twin, with a pecuniary
twist. In 1983, Pearl left his job as
a city sanitation supervisor in
Louisville, Kentucky because he
says he had a nervous breakdown,
which he attributed to having to
work with Black people. A psy-
chiatrist testified that Pearl
suffered from paranoid schizo-
phrenia; judge ordered that he be
paid $231 per week. The state
appealed the award, it was eventu-
ally overturned, and Gary Pearl
returned to the obscurity he had
before the “fear” defense.
What would happen if every
Black person fearing White people
got to file for unemployment com-
pensation, or carry a gun around to
assuage himself of his safety?
Would a jury be as lenient toward
that Black man as they were with
Michael Dunn? Would they acquit
just like the jury acquitted the men
who killed Medgar Evers (it took
decades for a jury to finally do the
right thing). A hard read of histo-
ry suggests that Blacks have more
to fear from Whites than the other
way around, but it is Whites,
rationalizing their fear, who get to
shoot without justification.
A thorough read of history, how-
ever, would remind us of the Dred
Scott case where the Supreme
Court ruled that Black people have
no rights that Whites are bound to
respect. Clearly, Michael Dunn,
George Zimmerman and the oth-
ers who have Klan sensibilities
and invisible hoods, believe a 19th
century Supreme Court ruling
instead of 21st century realities.
For folks like Dunn and Zimmer-
man, however, the 19th century is
not very different than the 21st.
Julianne Malveaux is a Wash-
ington, D.C.-based economist and
writer. She is President Emerita of
Bennett College for Women in
Greensboro, N.C.
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228.
Telephone (503) 285-5555.
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ation and West Coast Black Pub lishers
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Betrayed by the Criminal Injustice System
I
t all seems so familiar, doesn’t
it?
A Black man, or woman, or
child is murdered by a White per-
son – and America’s criminal
justice system compounds the
tragedy.
How deep is that particular well
of American racial injustice now?
How many names of innocents are
on that list of sorrow? How many
more times will we have to look at
the faces of the survivors and see
that the pain of the loss of a loved
one taken by criminal violence has
been etched more deeply by the
betrayal of a system that – suppos-
edly – exists to protect them?
In fact, until the civil rights vic-
tories of the mid-1960s, being
betrayed by the nation’s White
majority was the only thing Blacks
could count on getting from the
nation they helped build and sup-
port. Today’s “stand your ground”
laws more than 20 states have
enacted continue the cloaked-pur-
pose dynamic of the post-1960s
get-tough-on-crime and crack-
cocaine-versus-powder-cocaine
laws—and the 19th century
vagrancy laws southern legisla-
tures passed after destroying
Reconstruction. They look “race-
neutral” on the books but their
origins and applications were and
are shadowed by racial fear, anxi-
ety, and hatred of Black people.
Their goal is not justice but injus-
tice.
But there can be no peace if
there is no justice. Isn’t that one of
the central lessons of the history of
L AST
C HANCE
Lee A.
Daniels
African Americans in America?
Of course, it’s an exaggeration to
say the incomplete verdict proves
there’s no justice today for Black
Americans in America.
For one thing, as other cases in
Florida, Arkansas and elsewhere
have shown, the trigger-happy
three of his companions who were
in the SUV with him that night,
will face justice for that crime as
well. Prosecutor Angela Corey has
been emphatic in stating she will
retry Michael Dunn for first-
degree murder. Certainly, his
actions after the shooting and his
whining letters from jail show a
deep hatred of young Black peo-
ple, especially males, and the
profound callousness required to
twist hatred into murderous
action.
However, the sense of tragedy
and justified anger at the trial’s
incomplete verdict underscores
another truth of Black Americans’
Hope remains that the murderer of
Jordan Davis, now convicted of
attempting to murder three of his
companions who were in the SUV with
him that night, will face justice for that
crime as well
response to being angered – not
physically threatened – by the
words and actions of others some-
times reflects not racism but rather
the pathological need of millions
of Americans to consider guns a
security blanket and problem-
solver.
For another, hope remains that
the murderer of Jordan Davis, now
convicted of attempting to murder
Page 2 The Portland and Seattle Skanner February 26, 2014
history: All through the centuries
they’ve always had to forge a
response to a terrible question:
What becomes a tragedy most?
The answer has been exempli-
fied in our present by the conduct
of the survivors of Oscar Grant
and Jonathan Ferrell and Trayvon
Martin, and, now, Jordan Davis:
To demand that justice be done.
That has always been the responsi-
bility of Black Americans (and
their allies among other Ameri-
cans) – to redeem the humanity of
those whose murders were ordered
by the state or condoned by the
state or ignored by the state. For
all the spectacular progress made
since the 1960s, it’s no less urgent
that Blacks today continue to bear
witness to that responsibility.
So, today, the violence – of lan-
guage and of murderous action –
against Black Americans exempli-
fied by the Michael Dunns of the
nation in fact signals that the ret-
rograde force of White supremacy
is still losing ground.
That isn’t a “happy” thought
when measured against the
tragedy that ended the life of a
youth who had his whole life
ahead of him. The only consola-
tion available to those who seek to
fully right that terrible wrong is to
remember the most powerful
answer to the question of what
becomes a tragedy most and stand
their ground on the fundamental
lesson of Black History – enunci-
ated first by the 19th-century
White abolitionist Theodore Park-
er, and given fresh energy by Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The arc
of the moral universe is long, but it
bends toward justice.”
Lee A. Daniels is a longtime
journalist based in New York City,
. His latest book is Last Chance:
The Political Threat to Black
America