(Alternate title: Snuff films are entertainment if the victim is black)
Every day, we see images of black men, teens and pre-teens being murdered. Stills of Eric Garner in the last seconds of his life. Walter Scott running or his life. John Crawford on store surveillance cameras. The list goes on and on.
The tagline is never the “Hey, get off on this!” that fits the showing. No. It is always couched in righteous outrage. Slather yourself in righteous outrage over this black skin being killed. His actual humanity is alluded to as a mere aside. The real point is to gorge on the feast of a black person's death.
Like Romans in the arena, we vote thumbs up or thumbs down. But, with a modern twist, we do it voyeuristically after he is already dead. We can’t vote to save him. We can merely vote on whether he should have been killed. The vote is, almost always, split.
From there, we dissect the death. Nano-second by nano-second. Never delving into the total of the man (or child). Never seeing the overall humanity of a real, complex human being with positives and negatives that mirror our own. Only the last few hours, minutes, seconds of a life. All cast in black and white, as if that is the measure of any person.
We try to divine what the now dead was thinking. His motives. Why he acted as he did. Accepting that he was simply terrified is just too easy. Unrelated events we know nothing about are dragged up and mapped to his ultimate death. The carcass is weighed and measured in a vacuum for our own entertainment.
Never is the killer held to the same level of scrutiny.
The American Colosseum. A place where murder is entertainment. Tickets aren't for sale but you can watch it on endless loop to your heart's content.
Welcome to modern America. My, aren’t we exceptional and advanced.