A commentary of black "geography of fear"

This article is a few months old but given the recent verdict in the Ferguson, MO and the general current discourse surrounding police brutality (toward African Americans), I feel like this commentary is still very applicable. Over the course of this class, we talked about spaces of fear as perceived by men and women. Though touched upon in some readings, the notion of highly racialized fear was not discussed with as much depth. This article notes, “Black men know that at any moment, they can be framed, arrested, hurt, or killed.” Particularly, this author’s black boyfriend worked as a taxi driver and was berated with many insults by customers: “Don't you speak English, motherf----r?", "I'll beat the shit out of you, n-----r", "Go back to your country, we don't want you here.” This made the man fear going into public, particularly the “mainstream” setting of the city (i.e. areas that project white culture) or areas with heavy police presence. In this sense, fear may not merely relate to specific physical violence or sexual aggression as our readings have discussed, but to general violence in “discourse.”

Furthermore, this author talks about how this working knowledge of black male vulnerability can, by extension, induce fear in females. We mustn't assume that separate genders hold priorities that solely reflect their personal markers. People have friends, partners, family who often bridge different gaps of race, gender, and creed and thusly may still hold ideologies related to these separate typologies in high order. In this way, the violence against “Michael Brown, a young Black man, is also violence against women.” Women must be passive, complicit subjects in negotiating the reality that is black vulnerability. As the author says, “We resist the urge to call or text them every few hours to see if they are okay, and blow up their phones and Facebook inbox when they don't respond. We study every line in their face so that we'll never forget them. We go to bed with the dread that they are never safe.” Such a perspective shows that fear may not always be concentrated to “personal” violence. Rather, the connections we build with other companions may in fact posit their vulnerabilities as our quasi-vulnerabilities.

References:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eternity-e-martis/what-the-michael-brown-ca_b_5748760.html