Another black man was shot, supposedly by accident, in Minnesota on Sunday. This follows the graphic video taken in December of 2 Virginia officers harassing a black army officer over a minor traffic infraction. What causes these incidents?
If we are honest with ourselves, the answer to the above question is easy. Most whites fear the "other", and a scary black man is the stuff of nightmares to many. I suppose this fear dates to the antebellum South, when in many areas, black slaves outnumbered whites and they were kept in servitude by terror. On rare occasions, the slaves would rise up and kill whites before being subdued by overwhelming force. The racial memory of these uprisings is a powerful thing and informs the prejudices of many whites in the present.
In the short term there is little we can do. This nation is defacto segregated by race and as long as this is the norm, blacks and whites will fear and hate each other.
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