My blackness had become a usual prism while my maleness sat on the sideline in its innocent slumber. It was relatively easy to write about the anger and pain of racism relating to Ted Wafer. Wafer was a white man who murdered Renisha McBride in late 2013. She was a young African American woman who…
Tag: renisha mcbride
Joy Beyond The Prison and Prism of Pain: Racial bias and legislative intent
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. -Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although I don’t speak about it much I still think about Renisha McBride. I wonder how her family is doing. Renisha was the young woman who was shot in the face with a shotgun by Ted Wafer. According to…
Suspicious behaviors are tainted by our perceptions of “race” and gender stereotypes
Suspicious behaviors are often understood within situations and contexts. For example, George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin in part because environmental contextual cues shaped his belief of suspicious behavior. Trayvon, a young African American teenager, wearing a hood may have seemed out of place in a mostly White gated community. His behavior was viewed by Zimmerman within…
The Assassination of Renisha McBride, Part 2: Let Us Mourn In Peace!
As predictable as the sound of a choo-choo from a passing train, the media is trying to control how we mourn the loss of Renisha McBride. The media is trying to riff off the popular stereotype that people of color are overly emotional and therefore, unstable. That somehow our melanin correlates positively with emotional instability,…
When White Fear Leads To Black Death: Is This What Happened To Renisha McBride?
As you can see from the original post date, this article was written in November 2013. I still think about Renisha McBride, and now my mourning heart must widen and include so many other people of color who lost their life in similar ways over the year. I will never accept this as normal,…
Brian Ragsdale Writer.com 