Young Black Men are dangerous.
There, I said it. That is what generations of media socialized people have been thinking, right? Young black men–hell black men in general–are dangerous. Black women are brash and loud and believe themselves to be queens. I’m not making this up. Someone is making this up. No matter how you personally feel about back people it is difficult to deny the optics of an entire century. Only in the last twenty years are we seeing black men seen on screen as leading men and heroes nearly as often as they are portrayed as gang bangers and thieves. Back in 1996 the top film was Independence Day, in which Will Smith played on the stereotype of the street smart black man done good to help spawn a new generation of black heroes who were at once black and only moderately stereotyped (note: He played the same exact dude in Suicide Squad). Down at #17 on that list (imdb) is the next time you even see a black person on screen and that is in the film A Time to kill where, “A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the K.K.K.”
Yep, a film where a dude avenges the rape of his daughter sparks the rebirth of the K.K.K. Nowadays we call that trope ‘Taken” and we don’t have the gravitas and racial discussion. We just say, oh he handled what he had to handle.
I don’t think black men are as dangerous as the myth perpetuates. Yeah, I am a black man and yeah I can walk through the hood and not expect to get shot straight away. But I can’t walk through a small town in the south and not expect to get shot straight away. The difference is we call the people in the hood predators.
All people are dangerous. We just spend our time focused on the black ones.