"Even as we speak!"
When it comes to this reoccurring American tragedy, we hear this phrase, "even as we speak." And, for sure, there's another murder of an unarmed Black American by police. We'll see another news report that includes yet another "disturbing video." A view of the crime scene shows a Black American, usually a man, in a car, or standing outside a car. A Black man on the pavement surrounded by uniformed police shouting commands. The Black American sees police pointing guns, police shouting commands, police firing tasers. The outcome is known, for Americans have seen these videos before.
Tortured and dying, the victim isn't rendered first aid on the scene. The victim, if not dead, is left to die. And even after death, the victim's remains are neglected because narratives of what happened have to be concocted. Everyone has to be on the same page. Resisting arrest for a visible air freshener or a broken tail light or a possible counterfeit twenty . Or just being Black is a red flag.
So a car crash is the story on May 10, 2019. Until a doctor notices taser prongs in back of the deceased, Ronald Greene!
A car accident?
In reality, Ronald Greene
Why should the torturers and murderers halt in the middle of a long-standing crusade to render aid to Black Americans, designated the enemy of white supremacy?
American history of conquest and enslavement, of segregation and vigilantism, concentration camps and incarceration testifies to an acceptance of violence as a means of controlling and limiting the mobility of the "undesirable." The frequency, then, of the execution-style killing of Black Americans disrupts business-as-usual in America, if for no other reason than it takes place before a running video tape.
This was my response to a woman who let me know that she, born in the South, had, nonetheless, been raised to respect "colored" people. Her mother knew a "colored" woman. She was taught to respect this "colored" woman.
That was the term used then!
Yes, I know.
I'm a bit older than her and, therefore, old enough to remember. But I was speaking about the video tape of Ronald Greene's murder.
What are the implications for the innocent and privileged one, if, sticking to the subject of murder, we linger on the "habit" of grab-and-kill by police officers, acquitted by the courts? What are the implications about those "habits" the average white Americans, going about their lives, not needing to worry about a deadly confrontation with the police?
Nothing can be given up to right this ugly business.
Only how do the Black families of the grab-and-kill practice go on with their lives? We spend days acknowledging the survivors of Tulsa's massacre of its Black citizens while Ronald Greene, hogged tied, is dragged face down on the pavement by an American in uniform with a gun and taser who believes he's still "back in the day" or in the present, where the courts won't charge him with murder.
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