The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

by Carol Anderson

The aura of Black threat loomed. Like Trayvon Martin, Rice, too, aged dramatically from a minor into adulthood the moment they died. “As a recent study of police officers indicated, ‘Black boys are seen as older and less innocent and that they prompt a less essential conception of childhood than do their White same-age peers.’ Worse yet, the researchers’ ‘findings demonstrate that the Black/ape association,’ which is a dehumanization process, ‘predicted actual racial disparities in police violence toward children.’ ”157 Moreover, “computerized police simulators show black and white officers are each more likely to open fire on an African American subject they believe is armed, compared to a white subject who is dressed and behaving identically.”158 Columnist Charles P. Pierce wrote, “At its heart, open carry is about open season on the people who scare you. It’s certainly not about an absolute Second Amendment right that applies to black people as well as white.”159 The descriptors that often provide a cover of innocence—elderly, teenager, child, health care provider, mother—when applied to African Americans, were no match for the societal fear of Black people. In the film The Hate U Give, an activist portrayed by Issa Rae encapsulates the problem: “It’s impossible to be unarmed when your Blackness is the weapon that they fear.”160