From black overseers during slavery to FBI informants working against black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, betrayal has a long and complicated history. Throughout my long travails as a black man in America, I have heard variations of the theme every brother ain’t your brother. The phrase, every brother ain’t your brother, morphed into the more whimsical cliché credited to Zora Neale Hurston’s “all my kinfolk ain’t skinfolk” and can be heard from the mouths of many black activists. Yet again, we have another of those instances in the black community; the killing of Tyre Nichols.
Added to a long list of traffic stops that ended in execution is Tyre Nichols, who, after three days, and by all accounts, taking a severe and unrelenting beating by five black Memphis, Tennessee police officers, died of his injuries. Conservative media quickly pointed out that the officers are black, which in their minds, mitigates any notions of race playing a significant role. What they fail to acknowledge, and what black Americans have been ‘woke to’ for years, is that it is not just black versus white but institutions versus black. The collective roar of laughter you heard when former Attorney General Bill Barr said, “I don’t think that the law enforcement system is systemically racist,” included my cackle. To believe that institutional racism, which has existed in jobs, education, and housing operates to the exclusion of law enforcement flies in the face of logic.
The modern police departments began in the 1900s in New England, but their origins stem from the vile and racist intent of slave-catching. When Sandra Bland was dragged from her car and found dead in her jail cell three days later, it was instigated by a white police officer’s [Brian Encinia] traffic stop. The officer who killed Philando Castile—after his traffic stop has a Hispanic surname [Jeronimo Yanez]. Standing guard and restraining a crowd of onlookers from stopping the murder of George Floyd—before their eyes, was an officer of Asian descent [Tou Thao]. Former officer Kim Potter who killed Daunte Wright is female. The one thing they all had in common was the blue uniform.
Sadly, many of you are thinking of names I have not listed. Far be it for me to indict the entirety of the police department. No one expects heaven without them, but it should not be hellish with them. More than 40 years ago, Richard Pryor told a joke about an officer firing warning shots into the back of a black man. He now seems prophetic when you watch the video of Jacob Blake, shot seven times in the back and left paralyzed. The Memphis police and the media have America and the world awaiting the video to be released this evening of the beating death of Tyre Nichols. I cannot help but feel disgusted at its anticipatory release as if it’s a sequel to the George Floyd murder. These tragedies will continue as long as we operate under the idea that insanity has not been defined.
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