“It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out that day to destroy a body. All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.”
An odd discussion I had with my wife regarding this book. She felt it lacked a unifying cry to do something together, as a group. She is correct, that is not included here. Possibly Mr Coates does not know what that something is. But I do not think his intention was to include a solution. I'm not sure he sees one. The failure of this country to come to terms with its dark side, past and present, is something I consider on a daily basis and have failed to ever come up with my own answer or even a way forward. I know that in the 50 odd years I have been here, many substantial progresses have been made, yet we still are at the starting line.
As I write this, the news is filled with another black man killed by police while pinned to the ground. I do not know how many others have been killed without such notice since the last time such a story was national news. Reading this book has not made me more aware of this ongoing destruction, but it has made me more sensitive to the desperation and hopelessness of it. In light of recent mass murders, the push to have armed citizens seems to be increasing. Beyond the incredible notion that introducing more weaponry into a society that is already the most heavily armed by a huge factor, there is an hideously ignored racial factor. The man killed today had a gun in his possession and early indications are that that gun caused his demise. This is one of the primal fears in a white world: a black man with a gun. For the police it can represent a way out; he may have used it against us, thus we had to do it. While I have no doubt that the increased carrying of weapons by citizens will lead to more death, I also have no doubt that armed black men will also become more common victims because they represent a danger.
update 7/9/16. And it continues. All Lives Matter is a hypocrisy, a lie. Just as the sky is blue fails to take in all aspects, the hurried and mumbled all lives matter does likewise. A bomb in Baghdad a week ago takes the lives of 200...300? we don't even know the number and it barely registers on our conscience. The killing of 140 in France brings much more concern, the radius involved to touch our lives is that much closer. 50 killed at a gay nightclub in Orlando is even closer, the fear begins to seem real. How much lives matter is a function of identification. All lives matter seeks to blunt the hardening of our hearts.
Black Lives Matter. Whether we begin to see that is still just a hope.
