I’ve been deeply troubled by the attitude that the police, especially in the USA have toward black people. In recent times we have heard repeatedly about numerous shootings of unarmed black people by police officers. This has got me thinking about the relationship between black and white people in society, and why racial relations and integration keeps hitting these moments of crisis.
I’ve come to the conclusion that, in its worst form, overt racism, there is a behavioural process within those white people that are affected by this condition, that feeds off the fear of the potential of black people. Objectivity and reason are diminished, and a kind of primal, instinctive inclination to fear takes over producing a type of “fight or flight” response.
Fearing potential can come in two flavours, fearing negative or positive potential. Examining first the negative, and taking people in a position of authority, such as police officers, who work to enforce the law and limit the negative potential of all. In the kind of situation where armed police are involved, we can often see this condition manifest in a path that leads to an inevitable and tragic outcome.
Fearing the positive potential of black people, can be focused around excluding back people in society, maybe in the workplace from positions of power and authority, withholding knowledge, unfair pay, limiting the resource needed to accomplish the tasks they need to do, perhaps limiting their time.
Fearing potential is about control, it’s about preserving a mind-set that needs to continually establish and maintain its own status as dominant and superior, regardless of whether or not that in reality that is true.
Historically, black people have been controlled, victims, exploited, in need, and the whole black community suffers from the effects of the past to this day. Communities in America, the United Kingdom, Jamaica, Africa or wherever they are, are not free of the constraints and legacy of the historical events and interaction with white communities that bought them to this point in time.
Injustice in terms of exploitation of natural resources and the whirlwind caused by colonial presences in Africa, racial injustice in the workplace, or a black person shot needlessly, is all about fear of potential. To control or inflict injustice on another to prove yourself superior is no proof of valid power or authority at all, but rather a sad evidence of the fact tha the mistakes of the past haven’t been learned from, but rather are approved and affirmed.
In either case, fearing the negative or positive potential of black people, or any people for that matter, fear feeds nothing but injustice, and indeed injustice perpetuates pain in the historical wounds that society seeks to heal from its past racial conflicts, it reinforces them and gratifies the selfish cravings of those who perceive themselves to be dominant.