As reported by Rachel Hatzipanagos and Timothy Bella, writing for The Washington Post, these skewed perceptions by white people of Black people’s physical size—and the degree of “threat” they supposedly represent because of that—have been confirmed in numerous studies.
[R]esearchers say Lester’s description of Yarl, who is 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, according to his family, fits a pattern among shootings of young Black males. Lester said the teenager was a “Black male approximately 6 feet tall” — several inches off Yarl’s actual height, according to the criminal complaint. “Lester stated that it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he was ‘scared to death’ due to the male’s size.”
Similar language has been used in other cases, reflecting the fear people of other races sometimes feel upon seeing Black people, researchers say. In multiple studies, people who were asked to judge the size of Black people tended to see Black men as bigger and stronger than they actually were, and gave Black children the attributes of adults. The result is that they are seen as more dangerous, researchers say.
Racially biased perceptions of size, weight, and the supposed “threat” represented by Black males have been cited by the American Psychological Association as a factor in the disproportionate number of unarmed Black men shot by police. So too has the perception among white people that young Black males (from age 10 and up) are somehow “older” and thus “less innocent” than White children the same age. These stereotypes, note Hatzipanagos and Bella, are also routinely reinforced and used as excuses by law enforcement and others involved in acts of unwarranted violence perpetrated on Black men, both young and old.
When a police officer shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association defended the officer describing Rice as “a 12-year-old in an adult body.” Before George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, 17, in 2012, Zimmerman called 911 and described the Black teen as “a guy who looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something.” And former Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014, likened the struggle inside his vehicle that preceded the deadly shooting to “a 5-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.”
Decades of disproportionate coverage by local and national news media of crimes committed by Black people, stereotyped portrayals in television and film, and institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system have helped internalize these types of biases in the minds of millions of non-Black Americans. The New York Times interviewed neighbors and relatives of Lester, who described him as “surly,” sometimes “aggressive, and spen[ding] considerable time at home in a living room chair, watching conservative news programs at high volume.” In other words, he seems to be just the type of person—with a hair-trigger temper, just waiting to feel threatened—who one might expect to react violently to the unexpected appearance of a young Black male.
As Kurt Hugenberg, professor of psychology at Indiana University, explains to The Post, some research indicates people see Black men as larger than white men of similar stature—and thus more dangerous. This bias among Whites toward assuming a threat from Black people is even demonstrable in white people’s reactions to Black facial expressions. As The Post article notes:
Another study, led by UCLA psychologist Jenessa Shapiro, found that White people were more likely to perceive facial expressions as being threatening if those expressions came from a Black man. “White participants failed to reduce their judgments of threat when a (neutral) Black male face followed an angry Black male face,” according to the study, which was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. “Indeed, after viewing an initial same-race angry face, Black males were seen as more threatening than White males, even though the faces were pretested to be equivalently neutral.”
That young Ralph Yarl could be an honor student, a musician, loved by friends and teachers, or an all-around “sweet kid” likely never entered Lester’s mind when he saw the lost teen just trying to pick up his twin brothers at his parents’ request. Instead, Lester’s knee-jerk response was to feel threatened by the boy he imagined was “approximately 6 feet tall,” but was only 5-8. And whatever facial expression Ralph was displaying when he rang Lester’s doorbell probably didn’t matter much, either.
This research is not intended to excuse Lester’s indefensible actions; this writer believes he should be put away for the rest of his miserable life. He’s just an example of one more in the innumerable list of reasons Black parents are forced to have “the talk” with their kids, something few white parents ever need to consider. One Black parent interviewed in The Post article said, “[I]t’s a crushing thing to have to explain to a child.”
RELATED STORY: Biden acknowledging that ‘the talk’ didn’t apply to his kids was significant
But Lester is more than simply one individual: He’s the sad product of centuries of American racism, fed and encouraged in his fears and beliefs by an American culture that’s never come to terms with its most egregious, fatal flaw.
Markos and Kerry are joined by Aaron Rupar today to discuss what he is seeing in the right-wing media landscape. Rupar is an independent journalist whose Public Notice Substack is a must-read for those who want to know how truly outrageous the conservative movement is. We are addicted to his Twitter account, with its never-ending stream of Republican lunacy all captured on video.
