American racism in its most common expression dictates who gets the benefit of the doubt. Thursday night, in Kansas City, Missouri, Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black boy, mistakenly rang a doorbell on Northeast 115th Street, rather than his intended destination of Northeast 115th Terrace. The resident, whom police have identified as, 84-year-old Andrew Lester, a white man, apparently didn’t consider that Yarl may have made a wrong turn or even be a stranger in need of assistance. According to a statement that police say he gave them, Lester, a white man, assumed the teenager was attempting to break in and he fired twice through a glass storm door and struck Yarl in the head and the arm.
American racism in its most common expression dictates who gets the benefit of the doubt.
Ringing a doorbell and waiting for an answer is not a crime. But the police who interviewed Lester the night they say his .32 caliber bullets sent Yarl to the hospital didn’t arrest him. They had to first consider if Lester may have been standing his ground, they said. Only on Monday, four days after the man shot the teenager, Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson announced Lester has been charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Lester turned himself in Tuesday.
Racism is not just the assumption that a Black teenager is a threat; it’s the guiding spirit that prompted lawmakers in so many states to replace the “duty to retreat” language in state laws with the right to stand one’s ground no matter where you are. In a country where Black people are rarely given the benefit of the doubt, Black people in and out of legislative chambers warned that encouraging the public to shoot and discouraging them from de-escalating would lead to shootings such as what happened in Kansas City. But those warnings were disregarded.
To be clear, while Black boys and men may be among the most at risk from America’s “shoot first” mentality, we’re not the only…
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