The Stoking of Fear

Every so often I’ll abruptly awake, out of dead sleep, because something startled me. Typically it’s a sound, in the dead of night, with the dim light of night streaming into the room, casting shadows all around. I’ll bolt up, heart racing, fearing to move lest whatever woke me pounces as I stumble around blindly in the dark. I think about someone breaking into our house for some nefarious reason to cause harm. Even though I know the chances of this occurring are minuscule, I’ve been conditioned to think it based on television commercials, new stories, stereotypes, and more. Eventually, when nothing happens, I’ll settle back to sleep, slowly, as the adrenaline fade. I realize it was the dog, in the other part of the house, rolling around in his kennel or some other sound that I shouldn’t worry about, and this puts me at ease.

Fear is powerful. This is why it gets used as a weapon, a weapon that demonizes and dehumanizes individuals, causing us to view them as potential threats when they are not. I keep thinking about this every time I read Lillian Smith when she talks about the ways that politicians use fear to stoke up the emotions and hate of whites towards Blacks. She talks about these moments as if the Devil whispered in their ear telling them that in order to succeed they must create false fears. These fears have no basis in reality; instead, they get concocted and disseminated into the minds of the…