Suburban Detroit Area Shooting of African-American Woman Leaves Unanswered Questions

Last updated on November 17th, 2013 at 02:14 am

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A 19-year old Ford Motor company employee was killed on Saturday morning by a Dearborn Heights resident when she sought help after she was involved in a car crash.  Now her family is asking questions about the death, which police first described as a self-defense attempt gone awry.  Renisha McBride was shot in the the head with a shotgun on a suburban porch in Dearborn Heights, a predominately white suburb of Detroit.  She was apparently gunned down by the home owner, with a fatal shotgun blast to the back of the head, after she knocked on his door to seek help following a car accident

According to the victim’s family, police initially reported that she had been dumped and discovered near Warren Avenue and Outer Drive, but police now claim that she died on the home owner’s porch. On Wednesday, Dearborn Heights Police sent a request to the Wayne County Prosecutors Office asking that charges be filed against the resident who committed the fatal shooting. The name of the shooter has not been released, nor have the specific charges being sought been disclosed yet.

While the race of the person who fired the fatal shots has not been disclosed, Dearborn Heights is approximately 86 percent white. The city was incorporated in 1960 connecting two separate portions of Dearborn Township and forming Dearborn Heights. Prior to incorporation, the community was allegedly a “Sundown Town” , where black people were considered unwelcome after dark. In December of last year, a Dearborn Heights man named James Allen Myers was charged after making repeated calls to the FCC and the National Geographic Channel threatening President Obama. In one of the calls he bragged, ”I’m gonna hang our. . .president from a tree outside the White House with a burning cross and a swastika on the lawn.”

We do not yet know the motives of the shooter or even who the shooter is. For this reason, many people will argue that it is premature to assume that race had anything to do with Renisha McBride’s death. While at this point we cannot prove the killing was racially motivated, we can ask questions. Maybe, just one question is enough. When was the last time a frightened homeowner with a gun got so scared he shot a blue-eyed blonde teenage girl on his front porch because she knocked on his door? When we ask this question, it also reminds us that the race of the homeowner matters little. Even if he turns out to be non-white, would it change the dynamics of the scenario? The answer is probably not, because in America people of all races are socialized to fear the black teenager and to view white people as comparatively safe.

Unfortunately, when fearful people are armed and scared, their fear becomes lethal to black teens. America buries another black teenager needlessly murdered. As a nation, however, we should not again bury this case in a sea of denial, but instead we must confront the ugly truth. As a nation we have a gun problem and we still have a race problem as well. When those two problems collide as they so often do, we murder our black sons and daughters and then deny our collective culpability for the crime.

Keith Brekhus

Keith Brekhus is a progressive American who currently resides in Red Lodge, Montana. He is co-host for the Liberal Fix radio show. He holds a Master’s Degree in Sociology from the University of Missouri. In 2002, he ran for Congress as a Green Party candidate in the state of Missouri. In 2014, he worked as a field organizer for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick’s successful re-election bid in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District. He can be followed on Twitter @keithbrekhus or on Facebook.