Earlier this week, Alton Sterling was killed in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge. There are two videos in the public domain for this one and there may be more. The owner of the store has been forthcoming about what he witnessed, which sure looks like a plain execution from here. The Justice Department and the FBI are investigation and kudos to the Governor of Louisiana for getting them involved so quickly. In the midst of the media reports of Sterling’s previous run ins with the law, it seems that Sterling had a gun in his pocket. He was carrying a gun in an open-carry state.
By the way, for those who will make a point of Sterling’s carrying a gun, which has been reported in a number of places, remember that Louisiana is an open-carry state. If he were armed, then, right up until the moment somebody shot him to death, Alton Sterling was exercising his Second Amendment rights in exactly the way the NRA and its noisy apologists have suggested we all should.
Except that we’re not all black, the true original American Exceptionalism has come home again.
I haven’t seen the video of this, either.
Last night in the suburbs of St. Paul, another black man was killed by a police officer. This man apparently was licenced to carry a weapon and was accompanied by his girlfriend and a young child. The girlfriend livestreamed part of the encounter to Facebook. You can see the tape at the Mother Jones link above. I haven’t seen the tape, I just can’t.
This is Cassandra writing this Open Thread. I can’t tell you how angry I am that more black people are being shot down by police officers — on video — and that the odds are that they’ll get away with this murder. I’m just as angry that law enforcement keeps telling everyone that they need better cooperation and partnerships with the black community, yet they still can’t bring themselves to treat this community with better respect. The heartbreak and the anger here is that there is no way to win this game. You can’t gain enough respectability, you can’t follow directions closely enough to overcome *their* fears, their *anger*, *their* bigotry and all of *their* entitlement to take your life or the life of someone close to you. Police, fans of police and bigots will work at blaming the victims here, pretending that there is some perfect set of behavior that would have saved these guys. I’ll remind you that it is that fantasy of some perfectly subservient behavior that was the organizing theory of the Black Codes. That never went away apparently and lives most vividly in the souls of people who want someone to “make those people behave”.
I am a fan of non-violence to pressure governments to do the right thing. But increasingly — as people want to equate their freedom with their guns — I am thinking that the next step is for African Americans to legally buy a gun and get licenced to carry them. If enough of us do it, perhaps policing will change to adjust to a legally armed citizenry.
Not sure how much I can hang out in the comments here today. I’m accustomed to this progressive community devolving into conversations of how much more perfectly black people could respond to authority to save themselves this abuse, but am not sure I can psychically live with that today.
But this is today’s topic.
#BlackLivesMatter