White fear is anticipatory and operates without any actual threat of harm.
Evidence
Thus, white fear can be understood as something anticipatory, a fear just waiting to be expressed. It isn’t based in any actual threat of harm. Instead, the idea of black violence or crime does all the work. The mere possibility of danger is enough to motivate us to act as if we are in immediate danger. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 204
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- XREF: This anticipatory-fear mechanism is a building block for the ‘value gap’ definition the reader needs — fear that runs ahead of evidence shows how the premise that black lives matter less gets maintained.
Related
- White fear is anticipatory and dissociated from actual threat of harm (similarity 0.97)
- White fear reflects moral anxiety about racial sins, not just perceived black danger. (similarity 0.85)
- White fear of blacks stems from feared divine or black revenge (similarity 0.84)
- White fear functions as a constant, gravity-like force in American life. (similarity 0.83)
- White fear frames black people as threats to society’s overall well-being (similarity 0.83)
- White fear produces eliminationist responses rather than addressing root conditions (similarity 0.82)
- Collectively held political fears guide policy choices beyond individual experience (similarity 0.82)
- White fear of black people originated in reconciling democracy with slavery (similarity 0.82)
- White fear persists indefinitely and derails any real racial reform (similarity 0.81)
- White fear shapes even black people’s own perceptions of danger. (similarity 0.81)
- White fear includes the view that racial equality ends white America (similarity 0.80)
- White fear has always driven elimination of black people, not repair of injustice (similarity 0.80)
- White fear under slavery springs from guilty habits anticipating divine retribution (similarity 0.79)
- Political fear is a collective, deeply held fear that guides policy. (similarity 0.79)