"A perfect storm..."

"His black life didn’t seem to matter. But it does."

Charles Blow

"Playtime: 1943" via Shorpy's

I could write...

In Tamir and in others we see the beast we’ve created.
We see how we would react if raised in our privilege subjected to this culture.
And we are frightened by our lack of humanity.

...and again turn this back to us. It's what even "good" whites do.

I could write...

The boy waved a gun.
He refused to comply.
The officer had reasonable fear for his life.
The system works.

...and hide behind lies we tell ourselves about these strange folks who live among us. 

It's what many of "us" do. 

***

Those are the stories we tell ourselves.

Neither story matters, or even makes sense, but we tell them over and over again, because we systematically (in the most fundamental sense of the word) kill those we hate. This one just happened to involve a child (not the first time).

We do not talk much about his sister trapped in the police car, hands cuffed, watching the warmth of her dying brother flow out into the cold Cleveland earth.

We do not talk much about the 4 minutes Tamir lay bleeding on the ground--he got no help until others arrived at the scene.

***

Here's a Swiftian proposal that just might work.

A grand jury's interpretation of "reasonable fear" will always stand in court in a culture where white folks' fears start before the others even enter our field of vision.

Once a suspect person of color is disabled by a few rounds fired from a couple of feet away, reasonable fear no longer holds. None. Lynchings were once a family past time.

From The Red Record (Project Gutenberg)

Require that officers personally render assistance to those they incapacitate:

• That means laying your hands over the wounds, feeling the warmth of life ooze through your fingers, as you  staunch the bleeding.
• That means laying hands on a dying child's chest to do chest compressions if necessary.
• That means laying your hands on a monster as it morphs back into human form as your "reasonable fear" ebbs into nothingness.

Make the penalties severe for failure to comply--mandatory time.

That means if you're going to shoot a monster, you're going to have to touch a human.