Racialization of Fear: "Fear of Life" Justification for Killing Black Men

• In Event: "I Can't Breathe": Police Killings of Black Men and the Quest for Justice of Black Boys in School

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore how the police killings of Black men are justified by the racialization of fear. This paper will theorize how the “fear of life” rationale used by police officers is connected to the concepts of racialization and negrophobia. Police killings of Black men in America are historically rooted and driven by their fear of Black bodies. Fear, an otherwise racially unclassified concept, is inextricably linked to the presence of and interaction with Black bodies.

The injustice that Black men suffer, often in the presence and interaction with police officers, is an inexcusable phenomenon. With the advent of recent technology and the interconnectedness of social media, these racialized occurrences are now given global recognition. Too often police officers justify the killings of Black men by explaining that they feared for their life. However, there is a lack of recognition that these police killings are connected to the historical and societal fear of Black men in America. Without this understanding, it is difficult to situate the injustices that Black men endure, not only through interactions with the police, but as everyday citizens. In this paper, I will explore how the police killings of Black men are justified by the racialization of fear. Specifically, I will take a closer look at the “fear of life” justification utilized by police officers for murdering Black men. This discursive notion of fear will be critically analyzed through the understanding of racial formation in America (Omi & Winant, 2015) and Negrophobia (Curry, 2017). By better contextualizing this statement of police officers that have killed Black men, I hope to show that these behaviors are akin to the historical and societal fears of Black men.

Author

• Eskender A Yousuf, University of Minnesota