In the past several weeks, we have witnessed “two Black men in a Cadillac” being accused of kidnapping a White woman. The truth was that the woman had voluntarily gone to Disney World and could not tell her husband. He would find it hard to believe that she would go to Disney. It was easier, she reasoned, that he and indeed the world would believe that Black men in a Cadillac would kidnap her. After all, according to her logic, we have a reputation for that.
We also learned that yet another plain clothes Black police officer was shot by one of his colleagues who mistook him for a criminal. We also mourned the shooting and killing of a security officer at the Holocaust Museum by a White supremacist. Leading me to ask the question: “Where can a brother go to get his reputation back?”
Ever since “Birth of a Nation” it has been popular to portray Black men as thugs and criminals. Despite the passage of time, these image have not faded from memory. Instead, they have been used to justify racial profiling of suspects leading to the crimes of “Driving While Black,” “Walking While Black” and “Shopping While Black.”
These stereotypes apply to Black men no matter our position, education or social status. The impact of this societal marker is a sullied reputation in the minds of society as a whole. Thus, the fact that we have achieved great success and/or education does not exempt us from having our reputation come into question.
Let’s be clear that Whites are not exclusively responsible for the racial caricature of Black men as criminals.
Also bearing responsibility are some hip hop artists and scores of young Black men who would rather show us the crack of their behinds than the power of their brains. The result is a reputation for violence and base vulgarity that is coming close to being beyond repair.
First, there are simply too many White people in America, who, with reckless abandon, act on their closely held racialized stereotypes of Black men, resulting in our murder and further marginalization. What is even more disturbing is that the White people of whom I write simply refuse to admit their fidelity to the racial stereotypes. Instead, they choose to blame the routine occurrence of the murder of Black plain clothes officers by their White colleagues as “mistaken identity.” If this is to be believed, why don’t Black plain clothes officers mistake White plain clothes officers as criminals in as high a number?
