Nothing scarier in America than an angry white man (Analysis)

Watch Kyle Rittenhouse get acquitted 5:31

(CNN) -

The Brute.

The male.

And, of course, the bully.

Those are just some of the names of a racial stereotype that has haunted the collective imagination of the white country since the nation's inception.

The specter of the angry Negro has been conjured up in politics and popular culture to convince whites that a big bad Negro is coming looking for them and their daughters.

I have seen viral videos of innocent black men losing their lives due to this stereotype.

I've seen white people lock their car doors or grab their purses when men who look like me approach.

I have been racially profiled.

• ANALYSIS |

  4 cases converge to put American justice to the test

It's part of the psychological tax you pay for being a black man in America: learning to accept that many see you as public enemy number one.

But as I watched three separate trials of white male violence that unfolded in the US in recent weeks - the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, the Ahmaud Arbery death trial, and the civil case against the organizers of the Unite rally. the Right of 2017 in Charlottesville - I came to a sobering conclusion:

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There is nothing scarier in America today than an angry white man.

Kyle Rittenhouse carries a rifle in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, during a night of rioting following the death of Jacob Blake at the hands of police.

That night Rittenhouse shot three people, two of them fatally, but was acquitted this week after alleging self-defense.

He is not the "radical Islamic terrorist" I fear the most.

Nor is he the swarthy immigrant or the fierce protester from Black Lives Matter, or whatever the latest ogre some politician tells me I should fear.

It is meeting an armed white man in public who has been inspired by the white men on trial in these three cases.

• Here's what legal experts say helped absolve Kyle Rittenhouse

The American Legacy of White Male Violence

I am not suggesting that we start racially profiling white men.

The vast majority of white men are not a threat to society.

Countless white men ingested tear gas and faced rubber bullets while marching with protesters during protests last year over the murder of George Floyd.

Many white men - like the Reverend James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister - died for blacks during the civil rights movement.

There is nothing inherently violent about white men, or about any human being.

But recent events have convinced me that it is time to put another character on trial: a vision of white masculinity that allows some white men to feel that they "can rule and brutalize without consequence."

Protesters during a protest outside the United States Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.

This angry white man has been an important character throughout American history.

He gave the country slavery, the slaughter of Native Americans, and the Jim Crow laws.

His anger also helped fuel the January 6 uprising on Capitol Hill.

It is this angry white man, not the black or tan man you see coming down the street at night, who poses the most dangerous threat to democracy in America.

That is an overwhelming statement.

But these trials represent something bigger than questions of individual guilt or innocence.

They offer a haunting vision of the future and a choice about the type of country we want to live in.

Many Americans know the facts of the trials well.

In Wisconsin, a jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of all charges for the shooting death of two men and wounding another during a racial protest last year.

Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, said he was in Kenosha to help protect property during protests in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

He said he shot the men in self-defense.

• OPINION |

  Justice delayed is justice denied.

  Was Ahmaud Arbery Killed For "Running Black"?

In Georgia, three white men are accused of hunting down and killing Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, while running last year.

The men say they were trying to make a lawful citizen arrest, and the man who shot Arbery says he acted in self-defense.

Defendant Greg McMichael during the trial for the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery on November 8, 2021 in Brunswick, Georgia.

And in Virginia, a civil trial is being held to determine whether the organizers of the "Unite the Right" rally intended to incite racial violence.

One person was killed and dozens injured after white supremacists clashed with counter-protesters.

Race is an inescapable theme that runs through all tests.

At the center of each are white men accused of using unwarranted violence, either against an unarmed black man or during racial protests.

In Rittenhouse's case, a jury acquitted him of a criminal offense.

However, what happens outside these courts is the most terrifying.

It suggests that these judgments are a symptom of dangerous change.

Our politics gets more threatening

If there was an Exhibit A to describe this change, it could be an animated video.

Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar posted a Photoshopped video on his Twitter and Instagram accounts that showed him attacking President Joe Biden and pretending to kill Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword.

The House voted this week to censure Gosar, with virtually no Republicans backing the resolution.

Gosar removed the video after facing criticism but did not apologize, then retweeted a post containing the video.

Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona takes an elevator on Capitol Hill in Washington on November 17, 2021.

The Gosar video was not an isolated incident.

Violent political rhetoric has been on the rise among some members of the Republican Party.

And while not everything is driven by white men, much of it started at the top, with former President Donald Trump.

Trump's violent and sexist rhetoric is well documented.

More white men now identify as Republicans, and the gender gap between the two major parties is the largest in the past two decades.

A New York Times columnist, under the headline "The Angry White Male Caucus," said that this anger is fueled by white men who fear a changing America "in which the privilege of being a white male is not what it used to be. ".

Anger also seems to be getting worse.

After President Joe Biden signed into law an infrastructure bill this month, some House Republicans who voted in favor reported receiving death threats.

Election officials and school board members across the country are also reporting on the escalation of threats.

A recent poll revealed that 30% of Republicans believe violence is justified in saving the country.

Political violence is not limited to the Republican Party.

A Bernie Sanders supporter who publicly declared his hatred for conservatives shot five people at a Republican baseball practice in 2017.

But talk of assaulting and killing political enemies has become so normal - and seemingly acceptable - in conservative circles today that a white man felt comfortable enough to ask a right-wing activist in a public forum in Idaho last month. :

"When can we use weapons? ... How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?"

President Donald Trump speaks during a rally March 4, 2016 at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan.

Add to this toxic political atmosphere another element: laws that not only protect the violence of white vigilantes but, in some cases, seem to embolden vigilantes.

Activists hoped widely viewed videos showing white police officers and white men shooting black men like Arbery would inspire courts and state legislatures to review the laws that made such actions possible.

But even after nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, little has changed.

A growing number of Americans now want increased funding for the police.

And although Georgia revised its citizen arrest law, a reform bill called the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, it died in Congress two months ago.

We could see more guns in the streets

The conservative US Supreme Court appears poised to make it easier for people to carry guns in public, based on recent oral arguments about a New York gun control law.

The American civilian population is already the most armed in the world.

And our streets could soon get even more violent.

"A significant part of the current agenda of the gun safety movement is likely to come under attack in the next few years," Adam Winkler, UCLA law professor and author of "Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear, said recently. Arms in America, "to Newsweek.

"I believe that the ban on assault weapons and the ban on high-capacity magazines are ready for the new Supreme Court, with its recently invigorated Second Amendment, to tear it down."

Right-wing militia members demonstrate near Stone Mountain Park in Georgia on August 15, 2020.

The Supreme Court has also recently ruled once again in favor of "qualified immunity," the legal doctrine that protects police officers accused of misconduct.

There has been little national movement to reform "defend your position" laws, some of which allow people who believe they face an imminent threat to use deadly force without first attempting to escape.

At least 25 states have such laws, according to the National Conference of State Legislators.

And despite the shocking nature of the Arbery video, there has been little progress in reforming citizen arrest laws, which allow private citizens to detain or arrest someone they suspect of a crime.

The white men tried in the Rittenhouse and Arbery cases said they were acting in self-defense.

One of the men in the Arbery case testified that the unarmed black runner tried to take the gun from him and his life was in danger.

But consider the potential danger that other white men, or anyone who wields a gun in public, will feel emboldened to use deadly force even against an unarmed person by evoking the logic of those defenses, said Eric Ruben, an expert on the Second Amendment.

Judge Bruce Schroeder, left, Kyle Rittenhouse, center, and their attorney Mark Richards view a video of evidence during Rittenhouse's trial on November 12, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

"In other words, his own decision to carry a gun became a justification for using it, so that it is not taken from him," Ruben recently told the New York Times.

While prosecutors did not show that Rittenhouse was angry that night, there is a perception, fair or not, that he went to Kenosha for reasons more than simply to maintain public safety.

Comedian Trevor Noah reflected this sentiment in a comment that turned into a meme: "No one has ever thought, 'Oh, it's my solemn duty to lift a rifle and protect that TJ Maxx.'

And finally, there is a growing fear that no one will be severely punished for the January 6 insurrection because most of the rioters were white.

Trials of several defendants are making their way through the courts now.

Jacob Chansley, the so-called "QAnon shaman", was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his role in the United States Capitol riots.

Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, known as the "Shaman of QAnon", is seen at the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021 in Washington.

He was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison.

But many believe that the punishment will never equal the severity of the crime.

What if, say, a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters attacked the United States Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election of a Republican president?

How do you think conservative lawmakers would react?

We are seeing more threats, more guns, and more suspicions that the courts will be soft on white people who use violence.

This is the combustible mixture that makes more violence almost inevitable.

Angry White Men Have Damaged Democracy

We already have enough problems with white male violence.

Mass shootings in the United States are committed more often by white men than by any other group.

Top law enforcement officials now say the nation's biggest domestic terror threat comes from white supremacists.

And many of the most indelible news images of recent years feature angry and flushed white men, often armed with guns.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they attempt to storm the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021 in Washington.

Consider the scenes of the riot in the United States Capitol, which were filled with angry white men wielding crude weapons and beating up the police.

Or the grumpy faces of young white men holding tiki torches during the 2017 rally in Charlottesville.

Or the angry white men who stood up to anti-racist protesters across America last year.

The anger of white men has become one of the most powerful political forces in contemporary America.

That anger helped a white man win the White House.

Trump's rise to power is inconceivable without his ability to harness the anger of white men and embody it.

Has there ever been an angrier modern president?

He is the reference of the white man unleashed.

This anger from white men causes many people, including other white men, to look over their shoulders when they go out in public.

The two men who were shot and killed by Rittenhouse in Wisconsin were white, as was the man he shot.

Ijeoma Oluo, author of "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America," wrote that she lives in constant fear that angry white men will turn violent toward her and toward "countless black, brown, disabled, queer, trans people. and women of all demographic groups. "

The anger of white men could prove to be one of the biggest obstacles we face in building a successful multiracial democracy.

White supremacists sing against protesters after marching across the University of Virginia campus with torches in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11, 2017.

Lee Drutman, an academic who has studied political violence, recently told the New York Times: "I have a hard time seeing how we will have a peaceful election in 2024 after everything that has happened now. I don't see the rhetoric fade, I don't see that. conflicts go away. I really think it's hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse. "

This is not hyperbole.

Is history.

It happened before.

After the Civil War, the United States attempted to build the first biracial democracy by incorporating formerly enslaved people into the political and economic life of the country.

That period, known as Reconstruction, was mainly destroyed by violence from white men who used vigilante and terrorist groups like the KKK to assassinate elected officials, prevent blacks from voting, and overthrow state governments.

In 1898, for example, a mob of primarily white men staged a coup against the Wilmington, North Carolina city government, which had elected a multiracial coalition of leaders.

More than 60 black people were killed and the city's black residents were unable to vote or hold elected office for decades.

The insurrection of January 6 was unprecedented.

In many ways it was a sequel.

No more lectures on black 'thugs'

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham warned the Republican Party that "we are not generating enough angry targets to stay in business long term."

I was wrong.

The angry white business is booming.

However, no matter how obvious it is that the country has a problem with white male violence, most Americans will escape what black and brown men experience on a weekly basis.

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people attempt to storm the United States Capitol on January 6.

Not many drivers will lock their doors when white men approach a stoplight.

Few women will grab her purse when they pass a white man on the street.

Someone recently posted a meme about this double standard by evoking the memory of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old black boy who was killed in Cleveland by a police officer who, according to authorities, mistook his toy gun for a real firearm. .

"Tamir Rice was 12 years old and was killed for having a fake toy gun. Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, killed two people. He walked by police after killing two people. I have to go home and sleep."

That meme is the reason why I find it hard to tolerate listening to another lecture on "black culture of bullies" or a "black culture of violence."

My response to white men who use these worn phrases: Look at yourself in the mirror.

And look at these three tests, because they point to a terrifying future.

Here's what that future looks like: more angry white men emboldened by "standing up for their position" and citizens' arrest laws, inspired by a conservative interpretation of the Second Amendment.

And more dead Americans.

Guns in America Black Lives Matters White supremacism