It bothers me that this sub validates African-American people to be afraid even when it's, yes, irrational.

I remember in the days of reddit, there was a black woman in need of safety. She wanted a peace officer to talk to her, but there wouldn't be a peace officer available for months. However, she was adamant she didn't want a racist armed police officer coming into her house where she would be alone. The comments were all encouraging and validating her, telling her she wasn't being unreasonable to refuse an armed police officer.

I mean? Did anyone think it likely that the racist policeman providing security was going to find a reason to arrest her? This poor woman was actively jeopardising her safety because she was so afraid of police brutality, and no one challenged her.

When there are threads about a woman who is on edge around armed police officers, when running, driving, at work, waiting for the train, etc. the comments are a fap fest about how dangerous armed police officers are. Yes, racist police officers are more violent. Yes, police brutality almost always happens from untrained armed police officers. We need to protect African-American safety. But that doesn't mean black people are in constant and imminent danger of being brutalised or racially profiled every moment of their lives.

Encouraging black people to be afraid all the time only hurts African-Americans. Black people are reminded every time they "look suspicious" they could be falsely convicted of a crime, beaten, or murdered. Keeping African-American people afraid limits our freedom, opportunity and quality of life. It makes us more likely to believe we need racist police officers in our life for "protection", putting us in danger of black-on-black crime, which is the real threat to the African-American community

Our society wants us to be afraid. We are trained from a young age to be conscious of how vulnerable we are to racial prejudice. White people are more likely to be violently attacked or murdered by law enforcement on the street due to their higher proportional population, but they don't have it constantly rubbed in their face all the time. They are allowed to go about their lives comfortable and happy. Why is that?

As non-racists we should be rejecting the cultural conditioning to be afraid, just like we reject the conditioning to be disgusted of our natural skin tone, place our main value on our looks etc. Not leaning into and reinforcing it constantly.

Just needed to get that off my chest.