Recently, I wrote about times where I want to scream and others where I want to weep. I did both for Breonna Taylor after the grand jury indicted Brett Hankison on a charge of wanton endangerment and failed to indict the two others officers involved in the murder of Taylor.
My friend and former colleague made a comment on Facebook that resonated deeply with me. She wrote if one of those stray bullets hit and killed a dog, many white Americans would lose their minds.
That observation is spot on. It’s conventional wisdom among Black people that many white people treat animals better than us. You know how I know we’re treated worse than animals? No one is being held accountable for Taylor’s murder. No one. Animal abuse, neglect or abandonment is met with a fine — and public shaming. Kill a Black woman; nothing.
The grand injury indicted just one police officer for wanton endangerment for shooting into the apartment of one of Taylor’s neighbors. It should be noted here this neighbor was white. No charges were filed against the police for shooting into the apartment of the Black neighbor who lived above Taylor.
If it’s not about race, it sure looks that way. I don’t care if the attorney general is Black. In the great words of Zora’s Neale Hurston: “All skin folk ain’t kinfolk.” It’s a hard but true lesson to learn. Daniel Cameron is a protégé of Mitch McConnell, so clearly he’s not kinfolk.
The fact that the police got it wrong means nothing. They had no business in her apartment. Taylor’s current boyfriend Kenneth Walker wasn’t the ex-boyfriend police were looking for. In fact, after her death, the ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, was offered a plea deal that implicated Taylor as a member of his “organized crime syndicate.”
Funny how the same people who talk about the right to bear arms and protect yourself are the same ones defending the police and blaming Taylor’s boyfriend for her death because he shot at cops — cops that he didn’t know were cops because they busted into his home. He was protecting his home — standing his ground, if you will — from intruders. The intruders happened to be cops, but none of these details were sorted out until later. He had every right to protect his home. He had just as much right if not more to protect his home as that couple in St. Louis, who were so stricken with fear that protesters would break into their home as the demonstrators marched down the street that the couple came outside to brandish their guns and threaten to shoot. White Americans defended them but not Walker.
Funny how these are the same people who defend 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse for crossing state lines, carrying a weapon and killing two people because he was “protecting his community,” but Walker can’t protect his home, person or girlfriend.
Hmm, I wonder what the difference could be? The hypocrisy is so blatant.
The mental gymnastics of these hypocrites to justify Taylor’s murder is appalling.
Drugs were never found in Taylor’s home. She was an EMT. She saved lives but no one saved hers — or even tried. She didn’t die immediately. She lay there dying for about five minutes.
The War on Drugs (basically, a war on Black people) is an excuse for unmitigated brutality at the hands of the police. Police did arrest Glover, and they “recovered approximately 119.032 grams (4.2 ounces) of cocaine and over 10 dosage units of opiates,” according to court records. I don’t know much about drug dealing, but that doesn’t sound like some huge drug-dealing syndicate. (I just want to quickly point out the irony of the whole War on Drugs — the drugs brought into this country by the government, which then imprisons the Black people who sell those drugs.)
Taylor’s murder clearly shows we must fight racism systemically. Hankison and Cameron are working within a system that doesn’t care about Black people. It’s time we force America to fix the system.
