The Buffer Population:
Notes on American Fear
Like many who survive the United States of America, I am an overthinker. Maybe it is social anxiety. Every time I leave my house, I am forced to face the threat of a mass shooter. It doesn’t matter where I go. I can be at the post office, grocery store, movie theatre or elementary school. All this hypervigilance does a number on your nervous system. I find that if I drink coffee and crowd each moment with as many thoughts and sensations as I can, I feel like I am not wasting the moment.
To distract myself from the existential crisis called gun violence, I went to social media to doomscroll, which led me to Senator Eric Schmitt trending.
My first reaction was, “Who is he?” After I read the article and did a few google searches, I sighed. Not again. His statement reminded me of Governor George Wallace of Alabama. The state’s most popular segregationist put up resistance to the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963. Just like in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, I have to ask Missouri’s freshman Senator: In this charged political atmosphere, is your speech wise?
Maybe I need to take a step back. Maybe, this is none of my business. After all, I am a Black man. I have no lived experience being seen by European Americans as a human being. I have never been a white man, white woman, white child or white queer. When I interact with the world, it is assumed I possess empathy and compassion. It is this stereotype of the psychopathic white person that many European Americans are finding psychologically painful.
Because of the condition I find my European American friends and family in, I am glad I am not white bodied in this timeline. Under the second Trump Administration, public opinion toward whiteness is at an all-time low. It is not popular to be European American.
If I lived in a white body, I might listen to Senator Schmitt and cry tears of relief. After all, he is giving meaning to an identity that is denigrated daily as evil incarnate.
A practicing white male therapist I met on TikTok provided me tremendous assistance explaining the three major responses to racial stress being experienced by white people. He called them three realities.
Realities. (That’s insane work! I don’t even know where to begin analyzing the usage of the term realities.)
The first reality is shared by the greatest number of European Americans. It is the rose colored glasses of white supremacy culture. All 15 characteristics are so deeply ingrained, the person thinks their behaviors are universal to humanity and a part of the personalities of the white people who make up their sphere of influence. When they look at the current events of injustice, they see them, and then continue scrolling something better for their mental health and liking. These white people live in a manufactured bubble of delusion.
The second reality is the one occupied by Black, Brown and Indigenous people. It is outside of the whiteness bubble. Black, Brown and Indigenous people see European American as they are, not as their psychological projection. The racial caste system is always in effect. The power differential is real, and for the most part, the average European American can not tell when he/she/they are being treated as a human being or as a white person.
Lastly, there is the reality where are those European Americans who are taking the lonely, healing journey of deconstructing and walking out of white supremacy exist in. Physically, by being pro-human, they risk losing access to the only “community” that they know, meaning the white market spaces and family inheritances. From what I hear, the disconnection hurts because the white supremacists feel threatened by deconstructing whites. Yet, the deconstructing whites feel threatened by the white supremacists. This small group of isolated white bodied people is frozen in fear of what is happening to them and around them, because violence seems to be the only solution to changing the threat that is the MAGA movement.
Because I agree with this analysis, I am left with the personal question of: what do you want me, a Black man, to do? This sounds like an inside job. European American need to heal other European Americans. When the entire system is designed to protect your comfort, why do European Americans need the validation of Black, Brown and Indigenous people?
I am thinking outloud here. Perhaps European Americans need Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies to be a buffer between themselves and their more violent family members? Since the election, the trust deficit has been front and center. European Americans can not tell which one among them are covert white supremacists and which ones are not. I am leaning towards the idea that the refusal of Black, Brown and Indigenous people to stand as a buffer between white bodies is what is generating the fear factor? Without a buffer population, European Americans are going to implode upon each other.
Now, that is an existential crisis. I say with great sarcasm that I wish I had books, classes and an organization that could help with navigating said existential crisis. I mean, looking in the mirror and seeing a monster can cause a person to go insane. As an oppressed person inside the United States, the last thing I want is more psychologically fragile white people with access to guns triggered by feelings of rejection and abandonment.
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This feels so powerful. As a “white” embodied phenotype person, I am so very sorry. That doesn’t cut it. Hundreds of years. Nope. It doesn’t bring Trey Reed or countless others back. And yet, I am really hopeful this gutting moment, this reawakening of a never dead just dormant evil is a crack to let in a long caged light. There is so much loss, terror, and grief to deconstruct. Too much. Perhaps I’m naive, though I feel I am seeing more and more “whites” who *want* to unlearn,* unmask, un-layer this grotesque monster protective onion skin. Perhaps this is just occurring in pockets or small circles? I *think* I see an awakening or a desire for it? Perhaps I just want to believe this to hold off a dense ocean of self suffering? Prayers that this be a more expansive deconstruction. And it’s time for many of us to put greater action behind our words and prayers.