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It happens every time a black body has the life taken from it by an agent of the state. Whether choked out, pressed out beneath a knee, or torn away by a bullet, some mourn that life and others rage at its loss, while still others get to work.
Their work is of a different nature, not eulogy but libel. Their purpose is not to memorialize, but to rationalize whatever happens to these black bodies at the hands of police. Typically, this involves noting the decedent’s less-than-angelic history before bullets ripped flesh, or the brain was starved of oxygen.
Because only angels can be true victims. Only saints deserve encomium. And God knows, theywerenoangels. Theywerenoangels. Theywerenoangels.
If you say it enough, perhaps you’ll manage to forget a few things that would be obvious to even the most rookie of ethicists, but which escape notice in the philosophy department at Trump University.
Like the fact that whatever one may have done in one’s life has no bearing on the encounter one is having at a given moment with an officer. One’s drug history does not matter, nor their rap sheet, nor whatever trouble they may have gotten into in school…
