Let’s Talk About This
Racial Profiling, White Male Violence, and America’s Soul
The Hypocrisy of Profiling
The Supreme Court has now upheld racial profiling, with a stinging 21-page dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. What was once considered a violation of equal protection is now cloaked in legality, reframed as a tool for “safety” and “order.” But here’s the question: If the law makes racial profiling a legitimate form of search and seizure, can we finally be honest about where the true pattern of violence lies?
The majority of school shootings - and mass shootings more broadly - are not committed by Black men, not by trans people, not by immigrants, but by white, cisgender, heteronormative men. If we are to play the game of profiling, then truth demands we start there.
And yet, this is precisely the conversation America resists.
The Racialized Double Standard
When a Black teenager carries a toy gun, suspicion and death meet him before questions do. When a “Muslim” man boards a plane, his body is treated as a potential weapon. When a Latina crosses the border, her entire community is branded criminal. But when a white man walks into a school with an AR-15, the narrative shifts: HE is a “lone wolf,” a “troubled soul,” a “victim of mental illness,” or “suffers from AFFLUENZA.” Whiteness bends the frame, shifting blame away from collective patterns and onto individual pathology due to the ontological terror of Black beingness. This is not an accident…it is ontological terror at work. Whiteness insists on its innocence, even when soaked in blood. Blackness, by contrast, is always already criminalized, guilty before the act. Profiling does not follow statistics; it follows the gravitational pull of power.
History of Scapegoating
Scapegoating marginalized groups for violence has always been America’s reflex.
During slavery, Black revolt was feared more than white terror, though white masters committed daily violence.
During Reconstruction, Black men were portrayed as dangerous predators, while white mobs lynched with impunity.
During Jim Crow, Black communities were policed and segregated, while white terrorism burned towns like Tulsa and Rosewood.
After 9/11, Muslims became the perpetual suspects, though mass shootings in schools, malls, and churches were still overwhelmingly committed by white men.
The pattern is consistent: The real source of violence is never profiled, never named, because naming it would unravel the myth of whiteness as righteousness.
The Psychology of Projection
Why does America cling to this lie? Black psychologists have long described the cycle: When communities built on dominance feel their image threatened, they project their violence outward. Rather than reckon with their own history, they cast danger onto the Other. This is why Black boys walking home in hoodies become “threats.” This is why trans women are scapegoated as predators in bathrooms. This is why immigrants are branded “invaders.” The nation projects its own violent impulses outward, refusing to look at itself and yet the mirror never goes away. Every school shooting forces the reflection back and the reflection looks like the men who founded this nation: White, armed, entitled.
Rhetoric Becomes Atmosphere
Gun violence does not emerge in a vacuum. It is fertilized by words, sermons that scapegoat, politicians who inflame, media pundits who stir fear, hatred, and separation. When leaders spew rhetoric that dehumanizes trans children, immigrants, or Black families, they create atmospheres in which violence feels justified.
Words do not vanish into the air; they settle into the soil. And from that soil, bullets sprout.
This is why the so-called “Christian values” of empire are so dangerous. They preach purity while seeding hate. They call for order while baptizing exclusion. They ignore the Gospel’s call to justice, mercy, and love, replacing it with fear and control.
Cultural Betrayal
The wound cuts deeper when Black leaders echo these scripts. In slavery, some preachers were tasked with keeping the enslaved docile. During Jim Crow, some leaders counseled “patience” instead of protest and today, some pastors rail against queer lives, parrot MAGA talking points, or police Black communities more harshly than the state. This is betrayal…both theological and psychological. It intensifies trauma, telling marginalized people that even their own leaders will not protect them, but betrayal must be reframed. It must be named as distortion, not truth. Communities have always resisted betrayal by creating their own prophets, often outside the pulpit…prophets in kitchens, classrooms, therapy rooms, and on the streets.
Healing Through Reclamation
If empire distorts, then healing requires reclamation. Black communities have always known this. From hush harbors in slavery to freedom songs in Civil Rights marches, people reclaimed what empire tried to steal. Reclamation looks like narrative reframing: Retelling the story of profiling not as proof of Black danger but as evidence of white hypocrisy. It looks like ancestral rituals: Libations poured, names remembered, stories carried forward. It looks like embodied acts of resistance: Hair worn natural, names spoken boldly, truth told in digital spaces. These small daily acts are not trivial. They are therapy in motion. They are spiritual resistance. They remind us that survival itself is testimony.
The Prophetic Mirror
America fears the prophetic voice because it holds up the mirror. Prophets from Harriet Tubman to Ida B. Wells, from Ella Baker to Fannie Lou Hamer, refused to let silence reign. They named hypocrisy when it was dangerous to do so. Today, the prophetic voice might not come from pulpits…it may come from a podcast, a therapist’s chair, a classroom, or a Substack post. What matters is not the platform but the truth spoken and the truth in this moment is clear: If racial profiling is law, then let it be honest. Profile where the violence is. Confront the pattern. Stop scapegoating the margins while protecting the center.
Toward a True Safety
True safety cannot come from racial profiling. It cannot come from silencing marginalized communities. It can only come from confronting the soul of the nation. That means reckoning with whiteness as violence, not as innocence. It means shifting morality from control to care. It means dismantling the atmospheres of hate that fertilize bullets.
The Constitution may have legalized profiling, but history demands prophecy. And prophecy says: no more lies. No more scapegoats. No more silence.
Black Resistance as the Constitution of Truth
The Court may legalize profiling. Politicians may scapegoat the vulnerable. Pulpits may fall silent, but Black resistance will continue. It always has. It will continue to expose lies, to heal through reclamation, to demand prophetic witness. If America insists on profiling, then let the truth be told: The greatest threat to our schools has not been immigrants, Muslims, Black boys, or trans youth. It has been white men with guns. Until that is named, no law will protect us and so we resist…not with silence, but with fire. Not with scapegoating, but with truth. Not with despair, but with reclamation because Black resistance has always been America’s truest constitution and in this moment of regression, it must be our prophetic witness again.
