I have a weird theory about why white people are "scared" of black people. I think it is engrained in us at an early age and is generational. "But why?" a reasonable black person might query. I think it goes back hundreds of years.
Think back to the slave days. Who survived those times the best? I would suggest that the blacks who overcame a horrific set of circumstances would have been the strongest and smartest among their peers. Hell, just surviving Middle Passage would have put them on a plane higher than most of us.
And it wasn't just physical strength and/or endurance that got them by. It was also wit, guile, and intelligence.
So when an intimidated white person in the 1800s encountered a black person, that black person was very possibly smarter and stronger than the white person. That is intimidating. That black person had to survive unbelievably difficult circumstances.
Add to that this amazing ability blacks had to develop and maintain a distinct culture that white people today spend a lot of time trying to emulate. Sometimes, like when whites attempt to adopt black idioms, the emulation is very silly. But sometimes it's fantastic:
Anyway, back in those days, white dad would say to white son, out of fear, "black people are inferior. And, they are dumb." Which was the opposite of the truth. Because that's how people cope with intimidation created out of circumstance. And putting a shade of skin on it all makes it easy to maintain the lie.
Most of us white people, whether we admit it or not, grew up with either racist parents or, at a minimum, were in frequent contact with other racist relatives. Almost all of us white people have a lot of old, shitty tapes in our heads. That doesn't change if we date or marry a black person. What can change is that we dedicate ourselves to erasing those tapes so that we don't pass them down to our kids.
I am seeing that many, many white kids - 25 and younger I'd say, find discussions about race (and gender preference) bizarre. So progress is being made under this horrible backlash against Obama and a rising level of black empowerment.
When I was growing up, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, and Thurgood Marshall seemed like (from my white person's perspective) our typical symbols of black empowerment.
Today, we have, literally, millions of black people who are those symbols. From Obama to the black manager at my Kroger store and the black police chief of the city I'm in, and the black mayor of Chicago and other towns, to America's poet laureate , Amanda Gorman, who overcame a speech impediment and beautifully delivered her poetry at Joe Biden's inauguration. Maya Angelou was the first poet to read poetry at an inauguration since Robert Frost. Signs of black empowerment and success are everywhere, including here on Medium, where there are lots of black writers and thinkers.
The publishing industry is opening up for black folks, and so is the entertainment industry, finally.
The world is changing. There are whites who object to this change and would like it to stop. There's a long way to go on the road to equality, but the bulldozers are out. Whites who get in the way will be pushed aside by the momentum of change. But expect more backlash, anyway.
I've noticed a few comments from whites here saying, "stop stereotyping," pretty much as you predicted in your article. To them, I say, "stop telling black people how to think." Stand aside. Let black folks have their say. We can work out stereotyping issues when we achieve real equality.
