Decades of research have demonstrated that a mere subliminal flash of a black man’s face can make us fear the worst — to evaluate ambiguous behavior as aggressive, to miscategorize harmless objects as weapons, to shoot quickly and to inappropriately dispatch a perceived threat.

In video game experiments requiring split-second judgments, subjects — no matter their race, age or attitudes — are quicker to fire at an armed black man than at a white man carrying a gun, and more likely to shoot unarmed blacks than unarmed whites.

That raises criminal justice issues that won’t be resolved by body cameras. It’s a problem centuries in the making, and belongs to all of us.

–Sandy Banks, “Police Expectations Damage Black Men’s Realities“

The most important question Ferguson asks isn’t whether cops are good or bad. It isn’t even whether Wilson was afraid “enough” to justify killing. It’s why black boys and men make so many people so profoundly scared. Either there is something irredeemably dangerous in the very DNA of black males justifying the fear — or we’re living a lethal lie.

–Savala Nolan Trepczynski, “Time to Unlearn Fear of Young Black Men“

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Ajuan Mance