“We become exactly like the nightly local-news shows — if it bleeds, it leads — and our stories center on violent Black bodies instead of the overwhelmingly majority of nonviolent Black bodies.” – Ibram X. Kendi in How to be an Antiracist

My neighborhood has experienced violence occasionally, in the last 2 years we’ve lived here. We had a string of drive by shootings down the street directed at a single home but that has since stopped.

Even though my evening conversations with neighbors while securely walking my dogs, sharing ice cream with the kids across the street, laughing with friends in our home with windows wide open, stopping my car to chat with a neighbor after they wave when I drive by, superbly out weigh, the one time I watched from my home office as a young Black man stuck his body out a moving car to fire a dark, heavy pistol 6 times into my neighbors home…When a not so close friend cautiously asks, “Do you feel safe in your neighborhood?”, knowing it is because my neighborhood is mostly Black, I can’t help but think of that fear gathering moment.

I do feel safe in my neighborhood. As a white man it takes a lot for me not to feel safe. That is my privilege which I irreverently subconsciously and consciously try to protect.

I must separate that individual and their violent act from other Black bodies.

I am comfortable separating that violent act from my neighborhood when my friend questions the comfort and safety of my neighborhood. I quickly say “We’ve had some crime in our neighborhood but it’s always targeted and never been anything we’ve directly experienced…” I remove the act from our neighborhood as a whole and I believe it.

Black bodies must also not hold the weight of the individual acts of violence we see, hear about, or experience.

I will do the work to free Black bodies from the oppressive racist assumption that they are more dangerous than a White body. I will confront those thoughts as they arise. Process them with trusted friends. Observe the impact of those thoughts when they escape my head into my actions. And work to advocate for policies and laws that stand for the freedom of Black bodies.

Black Lives Matter.

I am continually learning and making mistakes as I write and process my own racism and work towards an anti-racist life and position. Feel free to contact me if anything I have written carries racism or oppression. I will work to change that. hassman.phil@gmail.com