So…here we are again. Different day, same black snuff video.
This time we find ourselves in a tiny, virtually all-white, thoroughly segregated, southeastern Georgia town where black people are rarely seen and never heard. Like thousands of similarly situated enclaves of whiteness, New Brunswick County, Georgia is for all intents and purposes a “family-owned” and operated (read: white) business masquerading as a “public” or “corporate” city or township or village or suburb or “ex-burb,” set up for the exclusive benefit of the ruling white folks, their white friends, and their white associates.
That such places exist is the result of good old-fashioned “white flight,” since the big bad too black city is only a short pick-up truck ride down the road.
By now, you have seen and heard the weary, heart-rending video of this “cold-blooded murder,” as Ahmaud Arbery’s family attorney Lee Merritt has described it. And we now know the broad outlines of this latest “modern-day lynching.”
Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was jogging near his neighborhood in Brunswick, Glynn County, Georgia on February 23. He attempted to pass through an adjacent “white” neighborhood when he was chased down, shot, and killed, again, in cold blood. His executioners were two white men, Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father-and-son “team” — who told police that they believed Ahmaud not only “fit the profile” but perfectly matched the description of a burglary suspect as well.
There are conflicting reports as to whether the police, without much trouble mind you, accepted this father-and-son’s “explanation” as to why yet another black man lay dead in the street at the hands of white men, one of whom was a former and official white “protector and server” of the white public against just such black interlopers.
The District Attorney, George Barnhill, yet another born-and-bred Southern “good ole boy,” not only refused to charge these killers but, acting as de facto defense attorney, defended, in writing, the lynching of Brother Arbery because such killings of black people fit neatly within the mandates and allowances of Georgia law, especially it’s “citizen arrest” and “self-defense” provisions and proscriptions. And, of course, it did not hurt these vigilantes’ case that the senior good ole boy just happened to be a retired Glynn County police officer and a former twenty-year investigator who had worked cheek-by-jowl with this selfsame district attorney’s office.
The murder occurred on February 23, 2020, more than two months back. Yet, only now since the leaking of the video to the general public and the ensuing, sustained outrage and demand by black people themselves, have these two finally been arrested — sadly….but thankfully, one day before what should have been Amaud Arbery’s 26th birthday.
Two other white D.A.’s also passed on prosecuting these armed and dangerous men, citing “conflict of interest.” Like the cowardly racists that they are, they passed the buck onto a non-existing Grand Jury.
This means, of course, that the incestuous “powers that be” in New Brunswick have had this case since the day it happened. They’ve had the video since at least April 1. Due to a state-wide shutdown of the Georgia court system because of the coronavirus pandemic, the Grand Jury will not even begin its “deliberations” until after the Georgia state court system opens up in the middle of next month. All the while, these two have been walking around, living their lives, even bragging and boasting to like-minded family and friends of their “exploits” in bagging and tagging yet another good-for-nothin’ lazy “nigger.”
But, again, finally, because and only because of pressure primarily from the nation-state’s forty-five million black people have these “men” been arrested and charged — by the Georgia state Bureau of Investigation.
Donald Trump and White Response
From the very first moment that this video became public, black people have called for justice for Amaud Arbery and his family. This demand has included black political leaders, black social and cultural activists, black entertainers, and black people wherever situated.
The titular Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden weighed in with a perfunctory statement of the obvious, agreeing that, yes, Ahmaud Arbery had been “shot down in cold blood” and “essentially lynched before our very eyes”.
Basketball superstar and all-round good guy Lebron James tweeted not merely about the obvious injustice displayed here, but about black folks’ historically tragic and never-ending reality in this nation-state: “We’re literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!”
But it was the redoubtable Whoopi Goldberg of ABC’s The View who first publicly called out Donald Trump to “say something” about this case. (After almost four years in office, Sister Whoopi still refuses to say the name “Donald Trump” or “President Trump,” on her daily morning talkfest, referring to him instead as “You-Know-Who” or “№45”).
On the same show, View co-host Sunny Hostin said of Trump’s very loud silence here:
“He can tweet about everything else. He can tweet about fake news; he can tweet about late-night talk show hosts. But he can’t offer his thoughts on this?” she said. “This is despicable. Despicable.”
And, finally bowing to public pressure, respond Trump did, in his own, delayed, inimitably racist way. Trump called the video “very disturbing,” saying that,
“…I saw the tape, and it’s very, very disturbing, the tape. I got to see it. It’s very disturbing. I looked at a picture of that young man. He was in a tuxedo, and — in fact, he put it up. And I will say that that looks like a really good, young guy,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
“My heart goes out to the parents and to the loved ones of the young gentleman. It’s a very sad thing. But I will be given a full report this evening.”
Fine. ‘Nuff said.
But…Trump being Trump…not quite: It was here, right here, where and when Trump defaulted to his and his core supporters’ white supremacist comfort zone, their white supremacist core, their white supremacist vibe. He insisted Friday there is “no question” the video of the shooting is troubling, yes. But he could not help himself. He could not just leave it there and let the Georgia Bureau of Investigation do its investigation. Again, Trump simply could not help himself. He sought to help the GBI along in its investigation thusly:
“You know, it could be something that we didn’t see on tape. There could be a lot of — you know, if you saw things went off tape and then back on tape,” Trump said.
This implies, of course, that these good ole boy white guys did not simply shoot a black man down in the street as though he were a rabid dog just as the video clearly shows. No. The black guy just had to have done something — anything — wrong, and so he probably deserved it.
Trump is right, of course. This young brother had committed the ultimate and capital crime — the absolute worst thing anyone can do here: He had the audacity to be born black in a country that still thinks that it is “white.”
White Men, Pick-Up Trucks…and Guns
The only things missing from this video is a giant Confederate flag billowing in the wind from the bed of the killers’ pick-up truck; and a gaggle of floppy-eared bloodhounds specifically and specially trained to sniff out “escaped” (always running) black people.
The history of white men, horses and dogs hunting down and chasing and killing black people is long and deep.
The history of white men serving as ex-officio and racially deputized keepers of the peace (read: social control of black people), i.e., race-soldiers, goes all the way back to the vaunted “Minute Men” of the American Revolutionary War, through the slave patrollers, and right into the current precinct houses of just about every police department in this nation-state.
Among our first American history lessons is that these “Minute Men” were “patriots” who stood ready at “a minute’s warning” to defend against invading, Redcoated British troops. The actual truth, though, is not so prosaic or heroic. In fact, like our dynamic duo here, the “Minute Men” were charged with and required to not only defend against the British, but also to put down Indian attack and black slave revolt, both of which phenomena were common occurrences from Day One of the white European invasion of these gilded shores.
The Minute Men were, in fact, this nation-state’s first “police officers.” And it is out of that history, out of that tradition that we find police departments and self-deputized vigilantes like this father-and-son posse still operating.
And sans cellphones, dashcams, bodycams, and video tape, they would still operate with complete immunity and impunity.