Exploring The Reasons For The "Please Don't Let Him Be Black" Reaction That African Americans Have To News That An Unidentified Person Has Committed A Violent Crime

Edited by Azizi Powell

This is Part II of a two part pancocojams series on the "Please don't let him be Black" reaction that a number of African Americans have had and still have to televised news that an unidentified person has committed or has attempted to commit a violent act. 

This post presents three article excerpts and one full online article about why a number of African Americans or other People of Color have had and still have the "Please don't let him be Black [or other People of Color population]" reaction to news that an unidentified person has committed a violent act. 

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-please-dont-let-him-be-black-prayer.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That pancocojams post presents the summary statement and an excerpt of a July 15, 2024 Reese Waters podcast entitled " "Cleaning Up After The Trump Rally Shooting". African American political and cultural commenter Reese Waters shared in that podcast his first reaction to the news that someone had shot former United States President Trump at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally was to pray "Please God, don't let him be Black,"

This pancocojams post also includes selected comments from that discussion thread that focus on that prayers and similar prayers (such as "Don't let him be Latino". 

The content of this post is presented for historical and socio-cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to all those who published these articles online.
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PANCOCOJAMS EDITOR'S NOTE
it's important to me to note that I don't support violence regardless of a person's race, ethnicity, nationality, or any other descriptor. 

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SELECTED ONLINE EXCERPTS ON THIS SUBJECT
These excerpts are given in no particular order and are numbered for referencing purposes only.

ONLINE ARTICLE #1
From https://www.themarysue.com/brian-broome-punch-me-up-to-the-gods-interview/ "Interview: Brian Broome’s Punch Me Up to the Gods Is a Stunning Introspection of Black Boyhood" by Larissa Irankunda, Published: May 18, 2021

…"TMS: The Black experience is one that is nuanced and wonderfully multifaceted, but it’s often boxed into a monolith. How do you think you’ve challenged that now, as an adult, versus when you were growing up?

Broome: In the small, mostly white town where I grew up, I think I really did believe that I was responsible for representing Black people. So, I tried to be as agreeable as possible. I tried to stay out of trouble. I tried to be funny and gregarious. But it was all an act, and an exhausting one at that. At that time, I wanted to be seen as the “good Black boy” but for all the wrong reasons.

I also found myself judging other Black people based on this “we all represent each other” model. I remember sitting and watching the local news and thinking “please don’t let him be Black” when they would report on a crime. Because we have all come to think of each other as representatives of our “race.” This is also a function of white supremacy, in my opinion.

Now, I really just try not to judge other Black people for believing differently than me even when I’m disappointed by their beliefs. I try in my own small way to push back against this narrative that we all represent each other. I feel that one of the ways I’ve challenged the idea of a monolithic Black community is by writing this book."

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ONLINE ARTICLE #2
From https://labusinessjournal.com/news/burden-of-minority-means-always-having-to-say/ "The Burden Of Minority Means Always Having To Say You're Sorry" by Leonard Pitts, Los Angeles Business Journal, October 13, 2002 [complete article] 
"It ought to tell you something that Abraham Montalvo Sr. felt compelled to apologize.

He had not, after all, done anything wrong. He wasn’t the man who cased a rural Nebraska bank. Nor was he one of the three who subsequently stormed that bank, guns blasting, to slaughter five people.

No, he’s just a guy from the community in question Norfolk, about two hours northwest of Lincoln. The only thing Montalvo had in common with the four men arrested for the crime Jorge Galindo, Erick Fernando Vega, Jose Sandoval, Gabriel Rodriguez was a Hispanic name. Apparently, that was reason enough for Montalvo to speak up at a memorial service and express contrition on behalf of local Hispanics.

“To the white community,” he said, “please accept our profound condolences and sorrows. This community under no circumstances would ever justify such a horrible act.”

There is something plaintive and pleading about that statement. Something that sheds a telling light on what it means to be a minority among the majority.

Consider that in 1991, a man named Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for killing over a dozen men and boys. He had sex with the corpses, dismembered them, ate some of the remains. Dahmer was white, almost all his victims, black.

I don’t recall any white man saying, “To the black community, please accept our profound condolences and sorrows.”

There was no apology white to black.

Nor, I hasten to add, should there have been. Jeffrey Dahmer’s sins reflected upon Jeffrey Dahmer. To the degree they carried any larger dimension, we understood it to be possibly environmental, perhaps psychological, but certainly not racial.

No one would have argued that this obscene quirk of nature, this freakish statistical anomaly, “represented” white people.

Contrast that with the freeze frame moment, so familiar to blacks and Hispanics, that comes as the TV news anchor announces some particularly heinous crime. You wait on the mug shot or the police sketch, all the time mumbling to yourself, “Please don’t let him be black. Por favor no dejes que el sea Hispano.”

Similarly, how many Muslims breathed a sigh of relief when the Oklahoma City bomber turned out not to be a Middle Eastern terrorist? And winced in pain when the Sept. 11 hijackers were found to be exactly that.

Because like it or not, when you are Muslim, black or Hispanic in the United States, you are a representative, a de facto emissary of your people, to the wider world. Worse, the scale is weighted against those unwitting ambassadors so that each time one excels, he or she is called an exception, but each time one screws up, an “I told you so” that comes back to their community in the form of suspicion, acrimony and fear.

The dynamic is as unfair as it is inevitable. And its power over the nation’s minorities is, perhaps, difficult for many American whites to fathom. Most have never had to live out their lives as symbols of the group. So they will find it hard to make the leap of imagination necessary to understand what is felt right now by Nebraskans with names like Ruelas, Lopez and Gonzalez.

Norfolk’s Hispanic population has grown mightily in recent years, a growth that doubtless brings with it all the bruises and growing pains that ordinarily arrive with an influx of newcomers. Now there’s this prayer Por favor no dejes que el sea Hispano that has gone unanswered. Now evil’s latest incarnation has Hispanic surnames. And at least some Hispanic people will therefore feel it necessary to hold close their children, watch their steps, wait for backlash.

Abraham Montalvo’s apology saddened me. It should sadden you, too."

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ONLINE ARTICLE #3
From https://www.sj-r.com/story/opinion/columns/2009/11/17/clarence-page-intelligent-use-intelligence/44243871007/ "Intelligence Use of Intelligence" by Clarence Page, 11/17/2009
"I admit it. As the early horrifying news of the Fort Hood massacre unfolded and I was jerked alert by the word that the suspect was a Muslim, a thought-prayer suddenly flashed across my mind: Oh, please don’t let him be black.

It’s the sort of reflex that is familiar to many black Americans. We like to see the best of our ethnic group spotlighted in the media, not the crooks, thugs and nutcases.”…

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ONLINE ARTICLE #4
From https://randib.net/please-dont-let-him-be-black/ "Please Don’t Let Him Be Black" by Randi B
[No publishing date is given for this article. However, the shooting that is mentioned in the beginning of the article occurred on Aug 26, 2015 https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virginia-tv-shooting/wdbj7-reporter-alison-parker-photographer-adam-ward-killed-live-tv-n416221]
"Please don’t let him be Black.”

 “Puh-lease, don’t let it be a brother,”

"Girl, I just hope it ain’t one of us”

One of these statements, or something similar, is the second thing that many of my friends and family say or think following a crime.  First, we acknowledge the victims: “how horrible” “poor child”, “Oh, I feel so sorry for the family.” ”Lord, have mercy, what is this world coming to.”

Then we think or say, “Please don’t let him be Black.”

Indeed, if we are honest, it is sometimes the first thing we think if the crime is one of national significance and/or political or social impact.

Being originally from Virginia, I was particularly saddened by the deaths of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the newscaster and cameraman from Virginia who were recently shot while on live TV.  However, I am embarrassed to admit that I was then relieved, momentarily, when I heard the shooter’s name,Vester L. Flanagan–until we saw his picture.  Damn.

I remember sitting around the dinner table when I was younger and any time there was a heinous crime featured  on our local news station’s “Crime Stoppers” segment, my Grandmother would literally bow her head and pray aloud, “Lord, please don’t let it be one of us.”  And if it turned out that the cops were indeed searching for a “medium build, brown man, with black-kinky hair, then my (usually soft-spoken and Black-folks-loving) Uncle would hit his fist on the table, and yell, “Ain’t nothin’ we can do wit you spooks.”  Those were the only times that I would see my Uncle frustrated.

I would have thought that this was just another one of my families idiosyncrasies (don’t judge — your family has some too) but, I’ve lived long enough and received too many phone calls from friends who have said, “Guuurl, Thank God the shooter wasn’t Black” or something similar.

Earlier this week, there was a professor shot in Mississippi and again while I felt a real sadness for the victim, I also felt a sense of relief when I saw that the shooter was White.  I am not suggesting this is a good thing, but I always talk about the real thing.  I then started to wonder, is this a Black thing?  Conversely, were there some White families that were sitting around the dinner table ruing over the fact that the Mississippi killer was White?  My guess is no.  So why are we, as a people, so concerned about the race of the offender?  I pondered this a bit, and this is what I’ve come up with thus far:

Black people are not seen as individuals. Rather, we are seen as a monolithic race, or even just a category.  Therefore, every publicized crime is a setback not just for the criminal, not just for his family, but for the entire race and the way we are viewed.  If a Black person commits a crime; Black people are criminals.  If a White person commits a crime;
it’s just one bad seed.

Many of us, even if it’s unconsciously, are out there representing our race to the very best of our abilities, so to then have this person whom we don’t even know set us back is frustrating. 

[…] 

Secondly, after a Black person commits a crime, we get post-crime fatigue (PCF Syndrome –yes, I just made that up). When we commit a crime, we know that it will be shown and the criminal’s face will be shown 950 times vs. if it’s a white criminal, the person’s face may never be shown.  I really believe that it becomes almost psychologically damaging, like hearing the same thing played over and over again.  Isn’t that an approved form of torture used by the FBI? 

Lastly, we know that the Black criminal will be further criminalized—actually demonized, whereas, the White criminal will be analyzed. Even different verbiage is used – one is a “killer” while another is a “shooter.”  So I think that sometimes we almost feel conflicted because you begin to feel defensiveness about the portrayal of the criminal.

We so earnestly pray, “please don’t let him be Black” when we hear of a horrible crime because if the crime has been committed by a Black person, the crime suddenly becomes personal.  We are still in the struggle—still trying to overcome.  We want all of our soldiers to stay in step.  When one of our sisters or brothers is acting  poorly, we cringe on the inside as if it’s us –because it is us."

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This concludes Part II of this pancocojams series.

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