Double Standards

No adult believes the world is fair. African Americans have been on the blunt end of the American stick for 300 years. Why should it be any different today?

But there’s something amazing the way police have handled the response to yet another police orchestrated murder – what else do you call kneeing for 7 minutes on someone’s neck while he says nearly a dozen times that he can’t breathe. Police have an obligation to de-escalate, to preserve human life, and to mitigate damage to property.

But not modern police forces, which have been trained and equipped as if they were occupying forces. Rather than come out dressed in civilian clothes, they appeared on Raleigh’s streets – many of them – in gas masks, “tactical” gear, and with batons. The same was true in most American cities last night that saw protests.

But that wasn’t true a month ago, when largely white crowds protested the COVID closure like this: