SAFETY TEAMS-A MUTUAL AID PROPOSAL FOR FIGHTING RACIST VIOLENCE AGAINST BLACK PEOPLE(AND ESPECIALLY BLACK WOMEN)

By Ken Burch

(Author’s note: This article is an attempt to explore a concept which others may be already developing in other parts of the country. If you or those you know are doing such work in other places, please post comments or links about the work in the comments section below).

One of the most pressing issues people of Black people face- even as racism is increasingly expressed in the form of “microaggressions” is the continued need for protection from the threat and the fact of racist physical violence.

Black people, especially Black women, face numerous threats- from alt-right groups, from random bigoted white individuals, from the sort of men who would attack any women of any race or identity for reasons grounded in misogyny or, when attacking black women themselves, out of “misogynoir”-a term for the expression of hatred of and commission of acts of violence towars black cis-women coined by Queer Black feminist Moia Bailey (1) (for black trans women, the term “transmisogynoir” , A term coined b Aimee Wodda and Vanessa R. Panfil in an article in the Albany Law Review

People in the white majority- people who, unlike Black people, are trusted by society with whatever quantities of weapons they feel they need to own and carry in the name of “self-defense”, and who, unlike people of color, can feel assured that, if they call the local police, the county sheriff, or the state patrol/police/troopers for protection…