A few further thoughts on fear from my previous thread on #AmyCooper. Some folx have challenged the notion that she was actually scared, and I appreciate everyone who pushed my thinking. Fake or real? I think we should consider “both...and…” in this situation and all like it.

Are white tears regularly weaponized to defend, deflect, project, or escape? Yes. When a white person is called out in a meeting, for example, white tears might be the methodology by which a white person absolves themselves of the harm they created. Those can be fabricated. 2/

Was that what Amy Cooper was doing? Maybe. None of us know. When I listen to her voice on the phone—isolating only her voice—she sounds scared. At that point it's not a performance, to me. Even if it was, it would be dangerous to judge every such instance as a choice. 3/

If we don’t acknowledge the ways whiteness programs white people to behave, we obfuscate the need for us to do the intense personal work necessary to move toward antiracism. We can just say, "Well I wouldn't react like that." But I don't believe us when we say that. 4/

Again, this is not to excuse her behavior, not to say “She couldn’t help it.” It’s the opposite. It’s to blame her for not doing the work before the interaction took place, and to call all white people to do the same. 5/

I want to clarify this because if we don’t look at the psychological effects of whiteness, compounded over years and years, then white people will give ourselves a pass. If we don’t recognize that sometimes we react subconsciously, we won’t root out what’s in our subconscious 6/

Do white people contort their voices/emotions in these situations? Yes. Should we continue to learn about the effects whiteness has on the automatic vs. controlled processes of the brain, on the amygdala, and on the central nervous system? Yes. 7/END