In retrospect, Kendi isn’t denying that Smurf was a dangerous person—rather, he’s saying that he was wrong to exaggerate this danger and associate it with all Black people. Similarly, many Americans assume that, because certain urban Black neighborhoods have higher crime rates, it is inherently dangerous to go there. But this is a leap in reasoning based on a misunderstanding of how much crime actually happens and whom it targets. Kendi points out that media narratives tend to highlight the most extreme examples of this violence, which gives many Americans a one-sided picture of such neighborhoods and leads them to immediately associate them with violence.