In case you were wondering why I haven’t said as much about Jordan Davis as I did about Trayvon Martin? I can’t formulate anything that isn’t blubbering. My son is 13, 5 ft 7 & just over 100lbs. It’s all I can do to let him out of my house alone. Being the mother of a young black man in America is hard frightening work in general, much less when you know that they can be killed for the crime of being black and outside. No one tells you when you give birth to a tiny person like this: 
That the day they look like this:
is the day people start reaching for guns & not patience. I’m haunted by the possibility that he won’t come home one day because he scared a white man just by breathing. And the worst part? No one will see the baby that I lost, they’ll be too busy trying to make him a monster to justify his murder.
The Terror of Black American Motherhood — Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Your son is adorable. It is so wrong that you have such reason to fear.
As a parent of a teenage boy, I empathize with your pain and worry, and think it awful beyond measure that your black son is at about six times the risk of being killed as my white son is. God forbid either one.
But you worrying that he’s going to get shot by a white man is about as silly as me worrying that my boy is going to get shot by a black man. 85% of white homicide victims are killed by other whites. 93% of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks. It’s horrible that this murder happened, and the perpetrator looks to be a real piece of work, but “some bastard of another race is going to hate him and murder him for the color of his skin”, fortunately, is not a particularly likely event for either of our families.
I think that you should consider the possibility, Robert, that her son is more likely to have white people generally live in FEAR of him and do irrational things, like follow him in a store, call the cops on him for EXISTING, etc.
The police are generally racist and have no problem pulling over, stopping, harassing, and following black men for absolutely no reason other than them being “suspicious”. Police also attack and/or shoot unarmed black men at a MUCH higher rate than white men. It isn’t absurd to worry that your child could be either killed by citizens or the very people who are supposed to protect our citizens.
In addition, even if the people who commit crimes against a black man are caught, chances are that person/people will not serve time. Especially if they are the police.
It isn’t the same situation; let’s not try to pretend it is.
Thanks ASH, you responded much better than I could have to Robert’s comment.
I will just add that I feel it’s rude to quote statistics to tell a black mother of a black child that her fear of her child being shot by a white person is silly. How would it make you feel if someone told you you were silly for believing x, when they could prove statistically that the probability of x happening to your child was “only” 7%? Isn’t even 7% too high when it comes to your child? But never mind that. My point is that the woman who wrote this post knows from where she speaks, and you, sir, do not.
I don’t dispute any of the problems you mention that black youth, or black people in general, run into in the course of daily life; racism is a powerfully destructive thing.
But the original poster wasn’t writing about wrongful shoplifting arrests, or being harassed by traffic stops; she was writing about her deep and specific worry that when she lets her black teenaged son out of the house, some white person is going to decide to kill him. And she alludes to how that pain would be aggravated in her heart because (mostly white) people would start coming up with reasons why it was her son’s fault, not the killer.
The latter part I can’t and won’t argue with.
Maybe it is rude, Eva, to point out someone else’s error in risk assessment, though I tried to be as polite as I knew how. But it would be beyond rude, it would be monstrously evil of me, if I saw someone making an error that could very easily have lethal consequences to that person’s child, and I said nothing.
What is in the original writer’s heart is in her heart, and I do not know it, as you say – but the relative risks to her son are not in her heart. They are written in cold numbers in the hard outside world.
What would your reaction be if I said that I was worried that my preteen daughter was going to be murdered by a black man? I do worry about that – a very little bit – but not nearly as much as I worry about her being murdered by a white man. Because the latter is far more likely. I am not telling the original writer that her worry about her son being killed is silly; it isn’t, and it’s unfair that because of his skin color, he faces a higher risk than average of an awful fate like that. I’m telling her that the specific scenario she is envisioning with special dread, is one of the least likely scenarios to happen. If, forbid it almighty God, her son is killed in a (black) gang-related shooting, or is killed by another black man in a robbery gone wrong, is she going to have the slightest relief that it wasn’t the SCARY thing that happened?
No. Certain crimes, and certain kinds of crimes, get a lot more attention in the media than their prevalence would seem to justify; sometimes this does draw our attention to an injustice, which is good to have happen. But very often that special calling out of the crime makes it what people irrationally focus on and worry about and try to prevent – to the great detriment of their ability to mitigate crimes against them in general, because they’re busy chasing ghosts.
A lot of white people worry overmuch that black people are going to commit crimes against them. When the statistics say that this worry is silly, then the worry is silly. (It usually is.) The same laws of probability apply for black people.
Robert, I agree with Eva and ASH’s statement and would add that the post isn’t about statistics or risk assessment. It’s about living with worry and terror.
Sure, people are more likely to be killed by people of the same race, in situations that aren’t motivated by race at all. But there are also risk mitigation strategies that lessen your chances of being a victim of crime in general. Not being in a gang or hanging out with gang members. Avoiding that seedy bar where fights break out all the time and a bunch of patrons carry guns. Living in the safest area you can afford.
But what do you do to mitigate against the threat that some racist will decide you’re scary because you’re walking home or riding in a car and shoot you in “self defense”? Stop being black? Never go out in public?
The threats that you’re powerless against are the ones that are the most terrifying.
And yes, it is made worse by the fact that Florida law allows people to very literally get away with murder. No, having your kid’s murderer go to jail wouldn’t bring them back, but there would be some sense of comfort. Having the people who are supposed to protect you go “Nope, self defense, no crime here,” is a truckload of salt in the wound.