The country has erupted into
warfare. Weeks before the contentious political presidential conventions are due
to begin in Cleveland and Philadelphia and as the summer days heat up, police have
murdered two black men without cause but with stunningly revealing video in
incidents that turned deadly in Baton Rouge and Minnesota.
The first in Baton Rouge was the
killing of Alton Sterling, a black father of five who was selling CDs outside a
convenience store with the consent of the store’s owner and showed his licensed
gun to a homeless man who had been annoying Sterling. The homeless man called
police, who responded by shooting Sterling although he was not resisting nor
attempting to use his weapon. The shooting was captured on at least two
different video cameras including that of a bystander as two burly white
officers wrestled Sterling to the ground and shot him several times.
The second murder of an innocent
black man was the killing of Philando “Phil” Castile, a school lunchroom
supervisor, in his car in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, following a traffic stop
for a broken tail light (“which wasn’t broken”). His fiancée Diamond “Lavish”
Reynolds live-streamed the aftermath of the shooting to Facebook from the
passenger seat of the vehicle, demonstrating uncanny narrative sang-froid as
Castile lay bloodied and dying on the driver’s seat next to her, with Reynolds’
frightened four-year-old daughter observing from the back seat. Castile had
been reaching for his driver’s license after informing the officers who stopped
him that he had a concealed carry permit and was armed. Notwithstanding this
peaceable prelude, one of the white police officers who stopped Castile shot
four times through the open window of his vehicle. Castile had no felony criminal
record although he had accumulated a number of minor traffic violations.
In response, twelve Dallas
police officers and two civilians were gunned down last night in an ambush and subsequent
exchange of gunfire during a peaceful protest rally, five of the officers being
shot dead by a “sniper” who was perched atop at least one “elevated position.” That
assailant, Army reservist Micah Xavier Johnson—who had served a tour of duty in
Afghanistan—is also dead, killed by a police robot bomb that was detonated near
him by authorities after a three-hour standoff.
As that shooter had indicated to
a Dallas police negotiator, ”The end is coming!”
When Johnson’s residence was
searched, it was found to contain weapons, explosives, and a computer
indicating that black power web sites had been consulted. Three other suspects who
were present at the Dallas rally protesting violence by police were briefly
taken into custody but were not charged.
Visions of the 1963 sniper murder
by rifle of President John F. Kennedy—which made Dallas infamous—crowd into the
consciousness of a generation that was stunned when JFK was gunned down during
a motorcade on a bright sunny day in November.
But current events are both less
momentous and significantly more troubling than an historic presidential
assassination, and have morphed into open race warfare (following years of what
black observers consider to be unheralded covert race warfare by mostly white
police against African-Americans ranging from ubiquitous unwarranted police
stops of unarmed men of color to outright police killings of African-American
and Latino men).
The events have been unfolding
against a backdrop of a jingoistic presidential campaign that has featured
storm trooper-like rallies with all the trappings of a Nazi spectacle. And a major
candidate, Donald Trump, who obscures and denies any similar motivations—although
his words and actions flowing nightly from our television sets clearly indicate
otherwise—has been screaming accusations and promises to his audience nightly as
his face distorts in impotent fury. White power web sites inflame and are
inflamed, and anyone with a sense of history cringes as brutal events unfold
one after another.
“Black Lives Matter” chant
protestors across the country, a cry that began in August 2014 in Ferguson,
Missouri, when unarmed black 19-year-old Michael Brown was shot twelve times during
a confrontation and killed by a white police officer, whom a subsequent grand
jury failed to indict. Witnesses reported the young man holding up his hands or
otherwise making various gestures with his hands, even pleading ”Don’t shoot!”
which became a national rallying cry. A Missouri grand jury sifted through a
variety of conflicting accounts before failing to conclude that the police
officer was wholly without cause to fear for his life and defend himself.
The city of Ferguson was eventually
found by a federal investigation to have become a catalyst for unwarranted
police actions by the mostly white police force against the nearly all-black
population. Weeks
of demonstrations with looting, violence, and destruction of local businesses
by arson followed the shooting and polarizing lack of grand jury indictment, accompanied
by police responses that included the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.
Confrontations between protesters and law enforcement officers continued for months
following the Michael Brown shooting.
A subsequent
federal investigative report described a city that “used its police and courts
as moneymaking ventures, a place where officers stopped and handcuffed people
without probable cause, hurled racial slurs, used stun guns without
provocation, and treated anyone as suspicious merely for questioning police
tactics” [Q&A “What Happened in Ferguson,” The New York Times]. The Ferguson police chief resigned soon after
that report was issued.
Other similar
incidents involving the deaths of black men at the hands of white police
officers have continued to occur in recent years all over the U.S. at an
alarming rate, feeding into the very real sense of paranoia that has gripped
the black community.
