Previously published at the Black Commentator.com
A couple of weeks ago, in the last days of 2020, a 14-year old named Keyon Harrod, Jr., with a cell phone in his hand, is assaulted by a woman claiming the teen stole her cell phone. The woman makes a fuss, attracting the attention of the hotel manager at Arlo Soho in New York, and calling on him to intervene. The Black, there, has stolen something from me!
He didn't.
Captured on video is the scuffle, nonetheless, that has been seen around the world. It's has gone viral, as they say. A young white woman and a Black young teenage male. There's the boy's father too. And the white manager.
We learn that an Uber drive arrives and hands the woman her cell phone. You can imagine what really happened.
Attorney Benjamin Crump is on the case.
A few days before, on the evening of the 22 nd , Andre Hill is in his garage when police arrive on the scene. At least one is wearing a body camera. There is Hill on the ground. That fast! He's not dead, but he's not receiving assistance from the police who move close to the prone man and surround him. To handcuff him. Andre Hill is Black.
Also on the 20 th , Dr. Susan Moore, a physician, dies. She video taped herself on the 4 th , in bed suffering from COVID-19 after having been diagnosed on November 29 th . Dr. Moore, 52-years old, fought to call attention to her symptoms in hopes of receiving the proper treatment, asking for Remdesivir and a requesting a CT Scan of her lungs to prove to the doctors that she, Dr. Moore, knew a little something, you'd think, about the seriousness of her illness and it's progression. In a message also seen around the world, Dr. Moore declared that no one took the time to listen to her; instead, she records, the medical personnel made her feel as if she were "a drug addict."
Finally, a CT Scan is performed and it showed "pulmonary infiltrates and inflamed lymph nodes," according to The Hill. And then, Dr. Moore was treated with Remdesivir. And then, despite still not felling well enough, she is sent home!
There wasn't much they could do for her!
" This is how Black people get killed" When you send them home and they don't know how to fight for themselves."
Because she is Black, one of the groups of people hardest hit by COVID-19. "I put forth and I maintain if I was white," she says into the camera, "I wouldn't have to go through that." But she did! And she is no longer because what does it matter that Dr. Moore knew what she was talking about?
On the 4 th , Casey Goodson, on his way home from the dentist, has a sandwich in his hand. Minutes later, he too is dead. Shot multiple times and at least three bullets enter his back. He was 23-years old. And Black.
In the year of the COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020, we've come to know the names of so many others: Ahmaud Arbery, shot dead by police on February 23th, Breonna Taylor, shot dead on March 13 th , George Floyd, shot dead on May 25 th , Rayshard Brooks, shot dead June 13 th , and Jacob Blake, shot dead on August 23 rd .
Anti-blackness, to be sure, didn't begin in 2020.
For years, Blacks, we lived in a nation that refused to confront it's legacy of racial violence. Black Americans were told we had better not discuss "racial issues" in mixed company. Keep that foolishness to yourselves. Within your communities. At home. We are asked to remember that it was bad for the immigrant Irish. The Italian. The German.
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