Each Black life involuntarily extracted… or sacrificed is an investment in the lengthy process of Black liberation
For weeks, some Black and other people who care about us have been in an an-ticipatory state regarding the Brionna Taylor matter, not the least of which was the $12 million settlement (for her life awarded her family) for her brutal murder by Louisville, Kentucky police, but murder charges against the perpetrators.
It was a veritable extended state of anticipatory anxiety as people awaited the outcome the extended verdict into the Bonnie and Clyde-type slaughter of the 26-year-old described in one article as “an award-winning EMT who was working at two hospitals during the pandemic…”
She was evidently ambitious, but her young life was violently extinguished in a late-night police operation, for which the players were being investigated accord-ing to continual news reports.
Evidently, the city of Louisville thought a whopping $12 million Wrongful Death Suit, described as the biggest police payout for wrongful death in the U.S., along with promised ‘Policing Reforms’ etc. would be the anodyne for the Taylor fam-ily’s, as well as the broader Black community’s, pain.
The thinking was that all those Benjamins would not only equate to the victim’s lifetime earning potential as well as “dazzle” her family’s eyes but also afford them twelve million reasons to get on with their systemic racism-infected lives. Worst of all, that Black Louisvillers (if there’s a name/word to describe them) would just “Go home!” as the powers-that-be might be thinking…
But that’s before “all hell broke loose” as they are wont to in America when there’s another case of perceived or blatant case of ‘justice deferred… denied’ for African-Americans… Black people.
Regardless of what some people may think or admit, America remains an unfa-thomable race-based country.
As such, following a lengthy investigation into the shooting death of Taylor peo-ple were waiting with the proverbial bated breath in Louisville and other parts of the country for the judiciary to do their job: come down hard on this latest gang of police abuse of another Black person’s civil and human rights. For generations they have been recurrently fingered for their overbearing and unjustified ‘bad po-licing’ in so-called “communities of colour,” especially killings of Black men. Am-ple evidence is now there to support that truism; it’s captured on police and/or personal cameras.
So when Louisville’s District Attorney Daniel Cameron appeared Wednesday to reveal the findings of the investigation of Taylor’s killing to the media, anything but police culpability in the killing of the young woman was predictable.
Not guilty was the verdict. And tension was palpable.
As the afternoon wore on the crowd increased, and as in the case of recent po-lice victims George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude, and many other recent Black police victims, the Louisville crowd comprising people of all backgrounds increased. Multi-racism and ethnic composition has become an evident feature of these anti-bad police protests.
It speaks to the reality that new generations of white people have outgrown the racism and other forms of ethnic prejudice and hatred of their parents, grandpar-ents, great-grand… parents.
They believe, and are even shouting the mantra and sporting their Black Lives Matter fashion fare.
Nothing wrong with that. They want to be on the vanguard of historic racial change in their country. After all they’re allying with their contemporaries… some of whom they probably regularly come in contact with in college/university classes and various social settings.
Change is coming to America. But many hurdles are yet to be sur-mounted. Among them is a political-cult leader who has mentally con-tracted a major social virus and continue to afflict millions of his un-abashed followers.
Not least among them is one Daniel Jay Cameron, a Republican, and first African-American Attorney General of Kentucky.
You might’ve seen him at the RNC last month literally massaging the pri-mary political cultist of America.
At the RNC he addressed Joe Biden.
“Mr. Vice President look at me, I am Black, we are not all the same sir, I am not in chains, my mind is my own and you can’t tell me how to vote because of the colour of my skin…”
And the political showman refers to Cameron as a “rising star.”
Meanwhile people are still hitting the streets of America protesting the botched Breonna Taylor operation and verdict. Which means the police brutality of Black people will con-tinue. And so will the protests… peaceful and violent, hopefully mostly the former. It’s what people want to see. But there are those who are hell bent on fomenting trouble to sully the Black Lives Matter, anti-police brutality protests.
Michael Jackson’s 1996 release “They Don’t Care About Us” might well be about the on-going social/racial turmoil infecting America right now.
THAT’S ALL
