Blacks’ brutalization at the hands of a corrupt Justice System drips onto America’s consciousness one unarmed corpse at a time.
When confronted with unflattering truths about ourselves we turn to minimization and rationalization.
Often I hear that Black communities’ focus on Police brutality is misguided because many more blacks die in gang violence perpetrated by other blacks.
In a You Tube video a well-meaning soldier argues that it’s hypocritical to complain about a headache (police brutality) when you’re dieing of cancer (gang violence).
However, if black on black violence is a cancer then blue on black violence is auto-immune desease.
Meant to protect the body-politic, too often, police turn on it, serving their tribe at the expense of the law.
Given a monopoly to exert physical violence police abuse this power in defense of a contrived privelege.
It used to be said — correctly — that the patrolman on the beat on any American police force was the last perfect tyranny.”
-David Simon, creator of the Wire.
Even good-intentioned cops succumb to a corrupt system in which they’re granted power to assault and automatic immunity from the consequences of its misuse.
We must fight to get to a place where the rule of law applies everywhere, even when face to face with an officer who’s had a bad day.
If we fail: the institutions we’ve created to fight the cancers in our communities will consume our civilization from the inside.