By: Fred Smith
Why the hell do white folks hate Black folks? That question echoes across our history, and the answer always leads back to the lies they built to protect their power. From the beginning, slavery needed a justification. They told the world we were less than human, that our bodies were property, that our free- dom was a threat. That hate wasn’t born from us—it was created and passed down to preserve white supremacy.
When slavery ended, hate didn’t die. It put on new uniforms: Jim Crow laws, lynching mobs, and police badges. It blocked our children from schools, denied us loans, and jailed us for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hate became a tradition, a system, and a strategy. And generation after generation, white America found new ways to recycle the same fear.
But here’s the most dangerous part: the fear they created spreads so far that it seeps into our own minds. When I turn on the news and see how they portray us, I feel it. I see endless mugshots of Black men, stories of violence in Black neighborhoods, images carefully chosen to make us look like predators instead of people. And if I’m honest, sometimes even I start to feel the fear they planted. If I didn’t know better, I would be scared of Black folks too. That’s how powerful their system of hate is—it teaches us to be afraid of ourselves.
White folks hate us because our equality threatens their privilege. They hate us because our excellence exposes the lie. They hate us because if Black people ever stood fully free, the old order would crumble. Fear is their weapon. Hate is their shield. But no matter how many times they replay those images, the truth still rises: we are not who they say we are. We are more. And that truth is what they fear most.
