If I Decide You're Scary, I Can Kill You*

*But only if you're browner than me. Lighter skin should legitimately fear darker skin, but the reverse is not true.**

**Is the common narrative, which seems generally backed by legal verdicts.

A story:

Once there was a boy who believed that brown bodies were scary. So scary that, when he learned of a demonstration in support of brown bodies, he believed police needed help protecting themselves from those dangerous, scary bodies. Even the white bodies that would be there in support of the idea that brown bodies are human too were scary for their belief. So the boy went to the demonstration to help protect the police from the scary bodies. He went in search of scary bodies. And when he found some, he shot them dead. And because he believed they were scary, he was right to do so.

That he was right was decided today. Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty of murdering the people he shot and killed. He was right to find those people scary and right to defend himself from them. The law has decided.

The law has decided that brown bodies--and those supporting brown bodies as fully human--are legitimately scary.

It was far from the first time and is unlikely to be the last.

And the thing is, it has nothing to do with a brown body's actions. It doesn't matter how a brown body behaves or what a brown body does. The only thing that matters is whether the white(r) body has the perception that the dark(er) body is scary. There doesn't need to be any legitimate behavior to cause the fear, the existence of the fear is justification enough.

If I decide you're scary (and you're darker than me), I can kill you.

It is the defense used every single time a police officer shoots a brown body, that the officer felt threatened. And nearly every single time, no matter any evidence that the brown body was doing nothing threatening to cause that fear, legal proceedings determine that the perception of danger was enough. Not based on any actions, the mere existence of the brown body was scary enough to justify its killing.

Even in the most notable exception, when Derek Chauvin was actually found guilty of killing George Floyd, the defense tried to make the argument that Floyd was scary--not in that moment, but he'd been scary in the past, so that was enough for Chauvin to preemptively fear him--even though at the time Chauvin had no knowledge of those past actions.

Because that is the only argument needed to acquit. Someone found a brown body scary, which made it okay to shoot that body. The law has decided over and over again.

And not just in the case of police. Vigilante citizens like Kyle Rittenhouse. George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin. The men currently on trial for chasing down and killing Ahmaud Arbery. They all hinge on the idea that dark bodies are inherently scary, so lighter bodies are right to perceive danger and attack them. Behavior and actions don't matter. The truth doesn't matter. Only the perception. The law affirms that that perception trumps all else.

White Fear Is Always the Best Defense

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man, was out for a jog in Satilla Shores, Georgia, when he was chased by three armed white men in vehicles. They confronted him, and then he was shot and killed . . . 

To justify their actions, they are arguing that the killing was self-defense. . . . There was no choice, they insist; they shot him in order to protect themselves. . . . 

As long as Black people have been in the United States, white fear has been deployed as a powerful and dangerous tool. Black people must learn how to navigate a world that not only encourages but sanctions and valorizes that fear, no matter the cost. But as I’ve watched the trial of the McMichaels father and son, and Bryan, I began to wonder if any limits at all might exist for a white person with a gun who is afraid for his life? The case could not be a clearer example of what happens when every armed white guy has a cop complex and claims to be afraid for his life.

If Arbery had been shot by a police officer, there’s no doubt that the cop would have used the “feared for my life” excuse to justify killing him. Now, it seems as if that claim—not only of fear but also of the self-imposed responsibility to enforce the law—is extended to any racist with a weapon. It’s no longer enough to comply with police officers for even minor transgressions; now Black people are expected to comply with anyone who claims to be afraid of them.

One need only look at another trial, taking place at the same time about a thousand miles north, to underscore the point. Kyle Rittenhouse is facing murder charges in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for fatally shooting two people and wounding another during a Black Lives Matter protest . . . 

White vigilantism is so ingrained in our culture that people like the McMichaels father and son and Bryan are seemingly deputized out of the womb and feel free to take matters into their own hands. These three white men have spent their entire lives believing in their own superiority, a conviction that allows them to believe that they can behave as if they were judge, jury, and executioner—even if the only crime they are addressing is some innocent runner who made the mistake of being Black in the wrong place. . . . 

As long as the defendant can convince a jury of their peers that they were the ones defending themselves against a bad actor, and indeed protecting the community itself from that person’s future actions, well then, that’s perfectly fine. . . . 

This trial, like Rittenhouse’s, is not just about the specific killings but also reinforces and legitimizes white vigilantism. To argue in a court of law, with a straight face, that one man with the gun who was accompanied by two others, was afraid of a single Black body captures the phenomenon in an unsettling light. . . . That seems to be the crux of their argument: The defendants were afraid. I wonder why they didn’t stop to wonder if Arbery, who was being chased by three white men, might have been afraid too.

That seems to be the crux of their argument: The defendants were afraid.

And our legal system says that's all that matters.

If I decide you're scary, I can kill you.