I guess I am more foolish than I thought. I have watched the executions of black men after black woman after black men, for petty crimes and fear, and I still hold out hope. The hope is that someday, shoot first and keep your questions to yourself, will stop being the norm in America. There are four groups that families pray for their return every day, soldiers, police officers, firefighters and black men and women. The fears of having your spouse, son or daughter die in defense of their nation, or in pursuit of justice or saving a baby from a burning building, bestows nobility on death. The pain is not lessened but the wound is cauterized with well-earned heroic praise. What do you say to a black parent who hears, “we feared for our lives” so we had no choice but to kill your black child.
The name Eleanor Bumpurs has been forgotten by many but is still a rallying cry against injustice for a lot of African Americans. Filmmaker Spike Lee gave Ms. Bumpurs a shout out in the pivotal choking scene that killed his fictional character, Radio Raheem. American history is littered with the indiscriminate killings of young and old black and brown people, the latest is 22-year-old Stephon Clark. I am not making a claim that young Mr. Clark was a choir boy or could even carry a tune but since when has mischief been punishable by death. The police suspected him of vandalizing and breaking the windows of cars. Stephon Clark, like most young people, was running home to the comfort of his grandma’s embrace. We know he was running home because he was shot at 20 times and hit 8 times, according to forensic and autopsy reports, in the backyard of his grandmother’s home. We even have night vision footage of him hurriedly scaling a fence seeking the safety of home.
I am always trying to understand the psychology of fear. What makes the police and even white civilians so ready to shoot or attack when confronted by black faces? George Zimmerman did not wait to find out if Trayvon Martin was a visitor to his neighborhood, his racist instinct said to him, follow and be ready to shoot. Seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis did no more than the average teen, he yelled at an adult [ Michael Dunn] who complained about his music choices and volume and was shot to death. The officer who killed Ms. Bumpurs, Stephen Sullivan, was acquitted after firing two shotgun shells into a mentally ill woman, the second a fatal blast to her chest. Philando Castile followed all the rules, he was a working-class guy, with a licensed registered gun, driving with his family. He was polite, contrite and informed the officer [Jeronimo Yanez], who pulled him over for a tail light violation, that a legally owned gun was in the car. Within seconds the situation escalated, and Mr. Castile never went home again.
Other than being black, I am not sure what frightened officer Yanez so badly that he fired into a car containing a black man just trying to get home, a black woman and a four-year-old black child. Apparently, none of their lives were meaningful enough to keep his powder dry. Unfortunately, it would be too easy to make a list of the dead but if a 66-year-old mentally disturbed woman and a 12-year boy playing cops and robbers at a playground, named Tamir Rice do not already matter to you, this is your opportunity to…
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