In successive days three incidents punctuated America’s haltingly slow march to a just society.
Last week Tuesday video of a white cop murdering Alton Sterling, an African American, went
viral. Sterling lay flat on his back writhing under the weight of two Baton Rouge, Louisiana cops
as one pumped four bullets in him. Far too often a cop’s bullet is the grim reaper for black men.
Place Sterling alongside Michael Brown, Ramarley Graham, Akai Gurley, and Tamir Rice.
Activists-black and white- woke from restless sleep and began non-violent protests. Black life
matters. It always has, and always will. It is a self- evident, self- affirming truth.
Astonishingly – as if a recurring nightmare, after rigor mortis had barely set in Sterling – the very
next day a Minnesota cop murdered Philando Castile, another African American, during a traffic
stop. The cop’s gun thunderously discharged a searing missive violently piercing Castile’s flesh.
Slumped in the driver’s seat his executioner stood over him with his murder weapon trained in the
car, lest the mortally wounded man move even reflexively. Castile’s girlfriend, seated in the
passenger seat next to him, livestreamed the aftermath of the shooting on the internet as her four
year old daughter sat in the rear of the car. Imagine the child’s experience. Add this to the
communal pain of losing Timothy Stansbury, Amadou Diallo, and Sean Bell. With this killing
non-violent protests-by people of all races – increased in cities across the country. Black life
Matters. It always has, and always will. It is a self-evident, self-affirming truth.
The very next day in Dallas Texas Micah Johnson, a 25 year old African American male, killed
five police officers and injured seven others at the conclusion of a peaceful protest march against
police brutality. Johnson, a retired United States Army veteran, carried out his mission with
precision minimizing injury to civilians. The cops who would later kill him claim he told them he

wanted to kill white people, cops in particular. The guardians and those unwittingly complicit in
the continued subjugation of African Americans are now apoplectic. Johnson has been lambasted
as a racist, and crazy. He may be these things or none of them. The purveyors of White supremacy
cannot conceive nor can they accept that he may be completely rational; that his act though horrific
could be simply a cry of “I’ve had enough”.
I looked at these three incidents, coming as they did in the same week. The juxtaposition brings
the issue into stark relief. Yet discussions by the talking heads and pundits dance around the
obvious. In most instances the reporting has been obtuse, and voyeuristic, lacking insight.
The apologists for the continued brutalizing and murder of black men insist that cops don’t act
from racial animus. When a cop discharges his gun in these incidents race is not a factor. The cop
is not thinking I am going to kill this black man because he is black. It’s hard to rebut. But it misses
the point. The argument isn’t that cops kill black men because they are black.
Cops kill black men because of a cultural reservoir steeped in racist tendencies, assumptions,
thoughts, and suppositions. Its streams and tributaries feed the society and body politic saturating
both common acts, and official interactions. Thus before any interaction a cop accesses the
reservoir, the collective societal consciousness that paint a picture of black men. The picture says
approach with caution, fear them, be forceful, and disdainful. It says they are criminal, and violent.
They murder each other. But most of all they have no right you are bound to respect. That he is
human and American is all that is necessary to afford safe passage in these interactions. But it
doesn’t. Those assumptions are behind the actions of supposed erstwhile non-racist. They
accompany a cop’s bullet that too often finds its mark leaving mothers without sons, children
without fathers, and wives without husbands.

Likewise Micah Johnson’s can easily be understood as the byproduct of the poisoned reservoir.
Indeed African Americans also draw from the reservoir. Police brutality inhabits that reservoir.
Johnson responded to stimuli. He was a cornered sentient being. He struck a blow. It’s horrific,
audacious, brutal, yet it is rational, even logical.
The black lives extinguished by cops ought to be met with the same revulsion and disdain heaped
upon Micah Johnson. Compare his single act to the incomplete list of martyrs mentioned in this
piece.

NodM