I'm a white woman and I fake being more scared of black men than I am to make them feel smaller.

It's been a few years but I remember it so clearly. I'm a white woman and I was walking home one night from work, around midnight. I was on a street I'd walked hundreds of times before and was sharing it with a black guy. He was walking in the opposite direction, and we both saw each other and smiled and said hello. Then he kept walking.<br><br>I immediately called my sister.<br><br>I told her "There's a black guy on the street right now. I'm really scared, I'm going to hang up and call the cops and tell them about him. If I don't call you back in 10 minutes, alert the authorities."<br><br>I hung up, called 911, told them about the "scary black guy" and then hung up. I called my sister again and told her that I spoke to the cops, and that they were on their way. I said I felt a little better and was going to keep walking the remaining few blocks to my house.<br><br>I hung up and kept walking. On the way were a bunch of other black guys doing various things like walking, smoking weed, standing around, etc. I didn't call the cops on any of them.<br><br>I got home, called my sister, told her I was safely inside, and that it's all okay now that I'm away from all the scary black guys.<br><br>It's so wrong, I know. But I do this whenever I see black guys at night. I call the cops on them, because I know that the cops will come and scare them and make them feel unsafe and humiliated, and I get to feel like I'm being a good citizen or something.<br><br>I don't even call the cops on white guys I see when I'm walking alone at night. I know they're more likely to hurt me, statistically, but my fear is not as strong because my ancestors weren't enslaved and beaten and lynched and subjected to human experiments and all the other atrocities that the US government has committed against black people.<br><br>The one time I actually did call the cops on a white guy, he wound up being a rich businessman who was giving another white guy (who was homeless) directions to the nearest shelter. The guy was genuinely trying to help him, and I genuinely almost got him fucking killed. That's how fucked up this story is.<br><br>I've never told anyone that I do this, not even my closest friends or family. I'm not saying I have the right to do this, or that I'm not guilty of a horrible thing. I just want people to see how deeply rooted racism goes, and how even the worst of it can be taboo from discussion.<br><br>I'm not trying to play a victim, but I'm scared because I know this may not end well for me. I'm already preparing for this account to be banned, because I know what I'm doing is wrong and I also know that this is a horrible thing to admit to, but I just want this out there.<br><br>EDIT:<br><br>First, I want to acknowledge that I'm truly and deeply sorry for anyone who was hurt by my past actions. The last thing I ever wanted to do was make anyone feel unsafe or dehumanized. Please know that I never, ever meant to do that in any way shape or form. I'm going to go into more detail about my thought process and what was going through my mind when I did this.<br><br>I didn't call the cops on random black guys because I was scared of them. To be entirely transparent, I wasn't even scared when I was walking alone at night. I'm a big girl and I can handle myself, and I know that. But that's not to say I wasn't traumatized. I was a victim of sexual assault when I was 16, and the guy who assaulted me was black. Since then, I have been irrationally terrified of black guys who I find attractive. I know it makes no sense, and it's entirely because of what happened to me. While I'm not attracted to black guys, I was already scared of them to begin with. When I was walking alone at night, even though I wasn't scared, I still had that underlying fear. I know it's not fair, that it's not right, but I was projecting my own trauma onto innocent people.<br><br>I know this doesn't make me any less guilty, but I want to state that I did not call the cops on every single black guy I saw. Only the ones who fit a certain physical and behavioral profile. This is what I meant when I said "scary black guys". I meant the ones who reminded me of my abuser, who was tall and muscular and had short hair and a certain amount of facial hair and was always wearing a black hoodie. There was one guy that I saw, and his name was Darnell. Darnell was tall, muscular, short hair, facial hair, black hoodie. I called the cops on Darnell, and I often think about what Darnell's life must be like to be profiled like that. I imagine he has a wife and kids, a good job, a nice house, and that he was on his way home from work to see all of them when a white woman called the cops on him for being black.<br><br>Whenever I called the cops, I was always terrified that they would see me calling and realize I was calling on them, and that they would hurt me. So I always hung up immediately. I never actually gave my location or told them to come. I know that doesn't make me any less guilty, but I always felt like I was in danger, and it was an honest fear that I had.<br><br>This behavior was something that I exhibited at the time, and I haven't done it since. I'm really not sure how many times I did it, but it was definitely less than 10. It was always in the same neighborhood, at the same time, and under the same circumstances.<br><br>Again, I want to acknowledge that I am deeply sorry for my past behavior. I realize now that I was in the wrong, and that I need to constantly check my own privilege and challenge my own biases and prejudices. This post was a way for me to express my own trauma and how it affected me, and to shed light on how deep-rooted and hidden racism can sometimes be.