Weaponizing phone lines to enforce white spaces has proven an effective tool for the passively fearful. In most cases, it lends anonymity, allowing a racially fragile citizen to lodge a complaint and recede into the shadows as armed agents of the State assume responsibility. Akin to keyboard warriors and internet trolls, 911 abusers can lob unsubstantiated attacks and escape involvement or scrutiny themselves. But this type of color line enforcement is a step removed from the action. It relies on a 911 dispatcher and a trained law enforcement officer to act on the frivolous, race-baiting tip. Some white space defenders want to be more involved, to take the law into their own hands under the guise of self-defense. Thanks to gun rights lobbies and state legislatures across the country, now they can. No trend better encapsulates the State’s increasing acquiescence to civilian weaponization of racial fear than Stand Your Ground laws. These laws fly in the face of traditional self-defense doctrine, posing a serious threat to public safety “by encouraging armed vigilantism

Christian Cooper walked his dog in Central Park on Memorial Day 2020 when a White woman threatened to call the police on him a report a “Black man” attacking her. Twelve hours later George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. These incidents highlight the private-public partnership in enforcing America’s modern racially fearful color line.

This recognition that the struggle over Black and White spaces extends beyond the street and into the corridors of political power is critical to understanding the issues and solutions discussed throughout this book. Incremental changes can be made at the margins within police departments and 911 call centers. But only sweeping legislative change, backed by true voter enfranchisement, can bring about the racial détente needed to protect Black bodies in public White spaces. The reforms advocated within these pages–reallocating police resources, deterring and punishing 911 abuse, reining in self-defense claims, heightening reasonable police use of force requirements, and ending qualified immunity–enjoy broad public support. But these changes elude us because voter suppression tactics deny marginalized communities full voter enfranchisement, because too few Americans equate voting with activism, and because too many people of color are denied meaningful opportunities to occupy the political White space.

A perverse cycle defines the history of fear-based racial segregation in America. Step one in this cycle begins with the creation of inhumane and unsustainable conditions for a Black underclass by the dominant White social caste. Step two involves the natural and justified resistance to this treatment by the Black underclass. That resistance—whether it be expressed as escape from bondage, civil protest against Jim Crow, or assertion of constitutional rights in encounters with police—is then turned against the resistors. This reframing becomes step three: White social leaders mischaracterize resistance as evidence of lawless, violent, criminal behavior, using the lie to stoke racial fear and justify further oppression.

Racially fearful White Americans regularly call 911 at the first sign of a “suspicious” Black person in their predominantly White space, be it a neighborhood, country club, or exclusive academic institution. These calls are met in force by armed government agents all too ready to enforce the color line.

Changes aimed at limiting unnecessary contacts come in many forms, including deterring racist 911 abuse in the first place and punishing it when it occurs, increasing dispatcher and police discretion to ignore frivolous 911 calls, mandating alternative, non-police responses to quasi-emergency situations for which an armed officer is not necessary or helpful, and rethinking how police respond when they are required to react. Many of these proposals derive from the same basic premise: that a fundamental reallocation of police resources is both required and desirable if society is to prevent the continued weaponization of racial fear and the continued abuse of law enforcement by private actors.

Four centuries of carefully cultivated racial fear have had a profound effect on the White psyche. The attitudes this long campaign has bred are enduring and pernicious, and they cannot be expected to change quickly. Racist tropes are so deeply ingrained in America’s collective unconscious that no amount of bias awareness will rid White people of the epidemic of racial fear

This chapter challenges legislative and judicial efforts to immunize police officers from all but the most outrageous misconduct by finding “objectively reasonable” virtually all uses of force by officers and providing “qualified immunity” in the rare instance when the use of force is deemed excessive. This failure to provide any sort of check or deterrent against the use of force by armed, implicitly biased officers improperly strengthens the weapon in weaponized racial fear and further empowers bias-motivated individuals to act on their biases.

The Supreme Court provides cover for private actors who anonymously call 911 to report suspicious Black people to the police, and for the police who arrive with guns blazing.

This final chapter reflects upon all of these systemic issues that work in concert to foster a shoot first, think later culture, and offers proposals for reform that may appear as radical departures from current law and policy but which find broad popular support across demographic lines throughout the country. Beginning with reforms to address private use of lethal force and ending with reforms to police practices and accountability, this chapter highlights some new and existing proposals that could work together to redefine Black and White citizens’ relationship with police and each other.