Another unarmed black man has been shot dead by a white police officer.
The video can be watched here. I will not be posting or otherwise sharing it online.
I do not want to contribute to the online necropolis of black bodies shot dead by cop and/or white identified vigilantes.
I am also finding it difficult to convey my exhaustion with once again having to write about how another unarmed black man has been killed by the police. My hand is moved by a commitment to tell the truth; writing is a small act compared to those who actually suffer the slings and arrows of racist white violence by America's police.
As I have written about and discussed many times in these years of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown, white privilege is the ability to twist and distort reality in the service of the bizarre and self-serving world that the White Gaze conjures forth for the psychological, material, and political benefits of its owners.
In the service to those delusions, White Racist Paranoiac Thinking invents a scenario that justifies the killing of black and brown people (and the homeless, poor, mentally ill, and other "disposable" human beings) by the police and their allies.
Eric Garner screamed "I can't breathe" as the police murdered him. White lynch mobs portrayed themselves as honorable men who were doing unpleasant work in defense of white women's and white civilization's honor and security as they burned alive and dismembered the African-American "imps of the inferno", the monster in the form of a man known as "the black beast rapist".
Walter Scott was stopped for a traffic violation. In fear for his life, Walter Scott ran away from a white South Carolina police officer named Michael Slager.
Slager then shot and killed Walter Scott.
Michael Slager then lied as he used the standard script:
The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, had said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled.
The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
Fortunately, Slager's lies were exposed by a video recording of the event.
He has now been charged with murder.
White racist paranoiacs will invert and twist reality in their defense of Michael Slager.
Scott was somehow threatening Slager.
Scott was trying to grab the weapon of Slager.
"We don't know what happened before the 'incident' occurred!"
"Remember Darren Wilson!" as though the latter was some type of innocent child and victim as he did the work of Ferguson, Missouri's Jim and Jane Crow-like police department.
"Scott was 'wanted for a 'family court warrant'! He is a horrible father, a criminal, why make him a victim when Officer Slager is the real hero!"
I have learned to accept that I, a black man, embody and channel a type of monstrous black masculinity as viewed through the White Gaze.
But even we monsters, the Garners, the child Tamir, the Crawfords, and now Mr. Walter Scott deserve a whee bit of mercy and benefit of the doubt before we are put down by the police.
If hunting man is the greatest of sports, I would hope, that for lack of a better word or turn of phrase, that white cops who choose to kill or otherwise abuse unarmed black people, would be a bit more "sporting" in their ways.
Ultimately, we, the black Frankensteins of the world, need to be a bit more cautious as we go about our business, playing with little white children as they pick flowers by the lake.
I am a man. I am a black man. I am a human being. I am an American citizen. I am not a monster. When will the police accept and respect that fact?
I know it is a question with a clear answer.
Yet, I still channel hope by asking it.