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It's Still White Supremacy that Murdered Tyre Nichols

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Dr. Lenore Daniels
Message Dr. Lenore Daniels

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily best him at his own game but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

Audre Lorde, late poet and activist


They colored it. Made it blue. Not the blue of blues. Sounding inhumane, they called him the "m----------r." He must be on drugs, did you see what that m----------r did?


They want him to obey, even if he doesn't know why. Why he was stopped blocks from his home. They want him to lie still. Don't run. And he runs. He must be thinking of home. When Tyre Nichols, 29 years old, is on the ground, handcuffed, he is beaten, a police officer, aiming as if to strike an approaching baseball, has his baton make contact with Nichols' head. Not once. But several times. Other officers, black police officers, continue to kick him. Manhandle him. Someone's son, calling out, Mom, Mom.


The Memphis policemen, speaking among themselves, are performing for their body cameras. At least, the ones turned on. They are claiming that Nichols reached out to grab one of their partner's gun. Nichols must be high. The others echo, yeah, he must be on something. Then Nichols is dragged after being beaten. Dragged as he is suffering. Dragged to sit up against a patrol car, where he slumps from one side to another while the officers act like buddies at the end of a successful hunt.


They did a job. Of course, they did just that, as surrogates of white supremacy.

*

Last week, I was thinking about the 31-year-old high-school teacher Keenan Anderson. Also, dead. On January 3, 2023, Anderson became the victim of a police officer's aggressive use of his power to inflict pain. To taser someone. Anderson was the cousin of Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullers. Like many around the world, I waited to see the video of Tyre Nichols' death at the hands of Memphis police. I managed to view it once. But I've spent my adulthood reading about this kind of violence when I've studied the foundational violence of conquest, enslavement, and imperialism. I've seen this kind of violence way too many times. Way too many times.


Nichols' encounter with the unit, Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhood (SCORPION), resulted in his death on January 7, 2023. Nichols wasn't a sex offender; he didn't murder anyone. According to the five black members of the SCORPION unit, pursuing this unarmed man, trying to escape violence by running toward his home, Nichols was driving recklessly. The unit has been disbanded as of my writing this article. That's one good to come of a man's death. That unit should never have been thought up, if we claim to be a democracy.

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Activist, writer, American Modern Literature, Cultural Theory, PhD.

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