The moment we see a black guy on our screen—any screen—we expect him to die...

[kpete]

Black Guys On Our Screens Always Die: Why I Can't Watch The Eric Garner Video
By
JADE E. DAVIS
PublishedDECEMBER 5, 2014,

I can’t look at the photographs without tensing and tearing up. I can’t put my hands up because my arms are so tired. And I am shot. Through the heart. Through the head. Through the soul. There have been so many people back to back, and there always are. The past few months have been different, though. The photographs and videos have circulated through social and traditional media. Images of the last moments of a father’s life. Of a son’s life. Of a child at play. Children with toys that are as American as apple pie. Their last moments, captured, witnessed, seen, shared with the world.

And here is the thing. These images aren’t new. They are as American as super-sized menu items. The skeleton in our closet has been kept in the historical record of lynching postcards, and shows that we’ve been here before. The only new thing is technology and our reaction to it.

After Ferguson, there were calls for police officers to be fitted with body cameras to make sure that the supposed bad apples can be held accountable. We somehow believe that the technological witness will be able to capture some truth that would otherwise be lost. In the midst of Ferguson, we saw John Crawford III, Tamir Rice, and countless others die in the same way. Even if we didn’t want to, their images circulating through social media made us bear witness to their unnatural deaths. The final, strangling rallying cry of all of these, “I can’t breathe,” repeated 11 times, can be heard even in silence.

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A mob prepares to lynch Jesse Washington. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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........right now, we talk about what it will take for someone to do something, when so many are entertained by the festivities. And right now we talk about body cams and their implications for surveillance society. It is easy to dismiss this in the larger culture as something that happens to deserving black bodies, something that can only be real for black bodies. Still, the moment we see a black guy on our screen—any screen—we expect him to die. He always dies first, but he is never the last.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/eric-garner-video-black-men-die-pop-culture-movies

[Donald Ian Rankin]

1. That must make the State of the Union speech edge-of-the-seat viewing... N.T.

[napkinz]

2. "These images aren’t new."