You’re scared. No idea how you got to be that scared, but this is a community that is terrified.
We saw that come to a crescendo last week when Ralph Yarl, a high school student in Clay County went to the wrong house to pick up his brothers. Anyone who has driven up around KC North knows that there are 14 types of names for streets. When I tell you to go to N. Tracy… Do you know how many North Tracy streets there are? I don’t know who Tracy was, but he or she is oversaturated in the streets of the Northland.
In the case of Ralph Yarl, it was 115th Street versus 115th Terrace. That mistake led to a kid fighting for his life after he was shot twice by a homeowner for ringing the doorbell. There are more details to come out and currently, the homeowner has not been charged. There are protections in the law to protect your property, of course. But something doesn’t make sense here and it’s staring us right in the face.
Everyone that lives here has to take a minute and balance their own personal security versus harming another human. Simply ringing a doorbell shouldn’t be a cause to shoot someone (twice.) Simply being black and ringing a doorbell shouldn’t be a death sentence. I live in this community and I know the conversations that are had. I know there is distrust of strangers. I know the racial overtones of this. I know there are media outlets saying “those people” are dangerous and that there are also laws out there that provide you some level of protection against defending yourself.
None of that adds up in this case. This was a crime of hatred. This was a crime of misappropriated fear. And, sadly, this was a crime where someone was all too excited to use a gun.
We live in a time of fear. Fear of crime, fear of terrorism, fear of the unknown. This fear is often manifested in our physical surroundings. We see it in the security cameras that watch us from every corner, the high fences that surround our homes, and the guns that we carry with us for protection.
I believe that much of our fear is actually about the unknown. We are afraid of things that we don’t understand, and we are afraid of things that are different from us. This fear is often misdirected, however. We are more likely to be afraid of the person who looks different from us than we are of the person who actually poses a threat to us.
The Yaris case is not an isolated incident. Every year, there are countless stories of people who are killed or injured because of fear. In some cases, the fear is justified. But in many cases, it is not. Add in a healthy dose of racism and gun ownership and the recipe is primed for chaos.
We need to start talking about this fear. We need to understand where it comes from, and we need to find ways to overcome it. We need to learn to live with each other, even if we don’t understand each other. We need to learn to see each other as human beings, not as threats. Shooting first, asking questions later only begs the question… How scared are you? Maybe YOU are the one to be scared of?
(Don’t be scared to follow Chris Kamler on Twitter, where you’ll find him as @TheFakeNed)