Looking-somebody-in-the-eye-while-black [View all]

[DetlefK]

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/25/1454234/--Reckless-eyeballing-really-is-a-thing-for-Megyn-Kelly

Amidst angry protests over Chicago’s release of the Laquan McDonald execution video, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, anchor of The Kelly File, was appalled at a protestor who stared down a Chicago police officer.

Kelly had a real problem with what the young man was doing, saying that she didn’t think it was appropriate.

...

“Reckless eyeballing” is actually a thing. And Megyn Kelly is mad about it.

This is not something that some white folks take lightly. That’s evidenced by this report from October on a 12-year-old black child who was suspended from his Catholic school after engaging in a staring contest with a fellow student. The student happened to be a white female. Or this report from August of this year, when a man in Dayton, Ohio, recorded his interaction with a police officer. The man was stopped for “making direct eye contact” with the officer. Or this report from two years ago when a 14-year-old boy was brutally restrained for giving a cop “dehumanizing stares.”

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http://wp.nyu.edu/howtoseetheworld/2015/05/30/auto-draft-46/

The question remains: why did Freddie Gray die? Because he made eye contact with a police officer. If that seems absurd, it is because we forget the long history of accusing African American men of ‘reckless eyeballing.’ Under slavery, that meant making any eye contact with a person in authority. Under segregation, it referred to any alleged look at a white woman, part of Jim Crow’s terror. Today, it is a tool of the prison-industrial complex, where ‘don’t eyeball me’ is a standard command.