One of the first things a Psych 101 student learns is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for human beings. Usually represented as a pyramid, Maslow’s five needs are ranked in order of importance with the most fundamental needs at the bottom.

Physiological needs are first (breathing, water, food sleep, clothing, shelter and sex), after which comes safety. In other words. our basic survival needs are paramount, followed by the awareness that our safety takes precedence, and insuring it dominates our behavior.

Because humans place a premium on safety they experience fear. As defined by Merriam-Webster, fear is “1.  an unpleasant often, strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger,” and “2.  anxious concern.” And to insure survival, fear produces the fight-or-flight response.

In mentally healthy humans, a level of fear exists in proportion to the “badness” of the threat. For example, a fear of bees would exist at a level lower than that of rattlesnakes, unless, of course, a bee sting could result in anaphalactic shock and death.

(Phobias ought not to be confused with fear. A phobia is categorized as an anxiety disorder which is “defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation.”)

Since Sept. 11, 2001, American society has been living in a heightened state of fear. Initially, in my opinion, government responses were warranted. But the government quickly elevated its fear level to over-reaction, passing legislation like the Patriot Act, which began to erode some of our freedoms as Americans. Then the Department of Homeland Security instituted outrageous levels of security checks at airports to the point where, now, arthritic, elderly women are frisked as if they were drug mules.

Our fears have been preyed on since 9/11. They have been heightened and bolstered by special interest groups (the NRA, big oil, the Christian right, to name a few) and their overly generous contributions to political campaigns.  They have been manipulated by the media, both conservative and liberal, with factual but biased and selective reporting. And they have been manipulated with an alarming amount of false harangues by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones.  

According to nationally recognized, leading sociologist Barry Glassner, president of Lewis & Clark College, “We are living in the most fear-mongering times in human history. And the main reason for this is that there’s a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears.”

It seems to me that during the past year or so, American fears have grown to an unhealthy proportion. Fear seems to cross all demographics and all professions. School kids are scared, cops are scared, African Americans are scared, immigrants both legal and not are scared, Muslims are scared, and anyone not of traditional sexual orientation is scared. And white Americans are the most scared of all, of those I’ve just listed.

In the words of Neil Strauss, writing for Rolling Stone magazine, “Emotions, especially fear, whip people up  into a state of alarm and they become angry and almost evangelical about what they believe.”

Which brings me to my point. Too many of our fears are irrational.

Most of the Mexicans who come to America legally are not drug dealers or criminals or rapists. Some might be, but not enough of them for us to fear an entire ethnic group! Most of them want a life better than they can achieve in their home country.

Most African Americans are average, middle class folks paying the bills, attending church, and raising normal, average American kids. There aren’t enough gang-bangers committing drive-by shootings to alarm anyone who doesn’t live in an impoverished ghetto in an inner city.

Most schools are safe places in America. On the whole, deranged killers don’t walk the halls of our schools with impunity.

American adults who don’t conform to traditional gender norms are, by and large, not predators, or proselytizers for homosexuality, or evangelizers for transsexual conversion. They are just plain folk, going to their jobs, playing sports, watching movies and raising kids.

Muslim Americans are god-fearing people who worship the same God as the rest of Jewish and Christian Americans, not terrorists waiting for a chance to blow something up. They are moms and dads, attending college, and taking their kids to the library.

But every day we see some crazy white person calling the police because a person of color suddenly appears at an unexpected time and place and he jumps to unfounded conclusions and raises the alarm. Thus, the police are dealing with a more unstable populace acting on irrational fears, so some oare over-reacting with unnecessary force, or by pulling their guns on little kids, or, worst of all, killing an innocent someone who posed an imagined threat to the cop.

I feel as if no one in any normal, social situation is presumed innocent any more. Our default reaction is of suspected ulterior motives on the part of “others.”

The gay teacher who has recently “come out” is suspected of choosing his profession so he can molest children. The black dude in the white panel van on my street is first suspected of casing the neighborhood, rather than delivering flowers to a home where it’s someone’s anniversary. The Mexican gardener on my street must be watched closely, because he is suspected to be a thief just waiting for an opportunity to present itself. The woman in a hijab at the grocery store, well, she’s just plain scary because she worships a mysterious god from a different holy book and dresses funny.  

During his political campaign, our president raised many of these fears loudly, publicly, repeatedly and imprudently. Then his supporters mimicked them, and the media repeated them ad nauseum, to the point that too many people believe the lies.  

To my dismay, I hear these fears declared almost every day. And because I now live in an area where my and most neighborhoods are multi-ethnic and multi-racial it is even more disturbing. People who live, work, and play among “others” are maligning whole groups of people even though they live, work, and play among “them” without consequence every day.

It seems to me that we white people might be wise to consider the threat we are becoming to all of the “others.” Will the thoughts or actions of a vocal few of us affect their attitudes toward all of us with white skin?

Will people of color begin to cross the street when they see a white man walking, for fear he will harm them? Will “others” start calling us derisive names in public, judging all of us by the actions of white supremacists or homophobes? Will white folk be shunned or treated like undesirables because some of us have no filter on our behavior or speech?

I like to think that because they, the “others,” know the pain of racism and bigotry, they will not perpetuate it upon “us.” But along with the hatred that is spewed today there is also a pervasive sense of vengeance against anyone we perceive has harmed us. So maybe I’m just exhibiting wishful thinking.  Maybe white folks are in for some major payback.

I heard recently on MSNBC that by 2040 the US population will be 60% people of color. How that bodes for white America remains to be seen.

We might do well to work on conquering our fears, instead of falling prey to them. It serves none of us well.