Story highlights Issac Bailey: I have feared black men, despite being black and growing up with black family members

He says because he's aware of his one implicit bias, he knows that even "good" cops can kill unarmed black men

Bailey: One can't think or pray away bias. It needs deliberative, purposeful action that becomes second nature

Issac Bailey has been a journalist in South Carolina for two decades and was most recently the primary columnist for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. He was a 2014 Harvard University Nieman fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @ijbailey. The views expressed are his own.

(CNN) I've been afraid of black men.

I've braced myself in the presence of unknown black men, felt myself ready for a potential attack even as all they threw my way was a head bob and a "What's up, brother?"

Issac Bailey

That's why I attended the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., in 1995. I needed to immerse myself in a sea of black men gathered for a cause of uplift so that I could alleviate dark thoughts I'd secretly harbored about men who wear dark skin -- because I've been afraid of black men.

Because I'm a man who has feared black men, despite the gaggle of black brothers and cousins and black father and stepfather who lived in the same house I did and loved me -- despite the dark skin I've worn since birth.

That's why I know that the skin color of the police officer who killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte in a still-disputed shooting is largely irrelevant, just as it is in most such incidents, no matter what media critics such as Howard Kurtz think.