Crime

When The Revolution Comes, I Hope It Starts In Florida

Florida jury awards $4 in police killing of a black man, purposely trying to add insult to murder.

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(LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)

There will come a time when black people no longer look to the white justice system or the white political system for redress of our grievances. There will be a future where the open contempt white Americans brandish towards the African-American community is met with something more than prayers for relief and some marching. Even Machiavelli teaches us that when the supreme authority sheds the mere appearance of treating his subjects with dignity, a return to the state of nature is imminent.

White people, generally, and #MAGA people, specifically, think this is all some sort of a game. They think it’s political theater. We take Roseanne, you come for Samantha Bee. You take Kanye, we deploy Kim. Black queen to E,4. White king to Pennsylvania, 1700. “But hey, why can’t we still be friends on Facebook?”

It’s not a game. White people are sending their armed agents into our communities, into our very homes, to murder us. That work done, then white people engage in “theater.” They engage in the elaborate show of a trial that legitimizes their ethnic massacres, then congratulate themselves on their process. Whites who disagree with the results of the show they themselves are complicit in then turn around and encourage those who have had their homes invaded and their communities humiliated and their children murdered to… vote. Usually for some other white person. As if mere participation in the system designed to destroy us is the cure and not part of the disease.

The reckoning has not yet come because most black people, most of the time, are inured to the reality of white supremacy. The videos of police shootings have been a wake-up call to white America, not black America. I’m a 40-year-old black man, this is how your police have always looked to me. One cannot survive in a society as racist as this one without being willing to overlook most of the racism. I know most white people don’t get that. But I don’t comment on the vast majority of the racism that is out there, the same way you aren’t always talking about the quality of the air you breathe. You only say something if that air is particularly foul, otherwise it’s just the milieu in which your life exists. So it is with me: white supremacy is the medium my life is dissolved into.

But Florida is particularly foul. Somehow that state’s mix of a large black population dissolved into a bunch of old, unreconstructed white people makes for a disgusting brew. When the glorious reckoning comes, it won’t be because your white supremacist president uses genocidal language to describe immigrants. It’ll be because of the casual racism and humiliation produced in places like Florida. From CNN:

A Florida family is “heartbroken” after a jury awarded $4 in damages for funeral expenses and pain and suffering in a case in which a St. Lucie County deputy fatally shot a father of three through his garage door, the family’s attorney said Thursday…

No charges were filed against Newman, who said he shot Hill because he brandished a handgun. Hill’s mother, Viola Bryant, filed a lawsuit against Newman and Sheriff Ken Mascara, alleging wrongful death, negligence, excessive force and violations of Hill’s 14th and 15th Amendment rights…

In deciding damages in the case, the jury awarded Bryant $1 for funeral expenses, and $1 for each child’s “loss of parental companionship, instruction, and guidance and … mental pain and suffering,” verdict forms show. Hill’s children are 7, 10 and 13.

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The family’s attorney surmised that the jurors were trying to “punish” the family for bringing the suit in the first place. I’m forced to agree, as this is the kind of humiliation of black people that Deplorables go in for.

This story has all the hallmarks of white supremacy. A neighbor called the cops on Hill because of a “noise” complaint. The noise? He was playing Drake in his own garage. Two officers showed up and knocked on Hill’s front door and garage door. Hill opened the garage door, and then immediately closed it. The officers claim that Hill “brandished” a handgun. (I’ll note here that no NRA spokespeople have defended Hill’s right to have a gun in his home, because of course they haven’t.) Whether Hill actually flashed a piece is disputed by eyewitnesses, but what is undisputed is that the garage door was closed when the officer opened fire, shooting Hill four times, including once in the head, THROUGH THE CLOSED DOOR.

Of course, the officer was not charged, which is what led to the civil suit, which in turn gave a Florida jury this opportunity to further piss upon a grieving black family.

I cannot hold the jurors accountable for their racism. I cannot hold the cop accountable for his murder. Nobody will. Batman doesn’t give a f**k about black people either. Whites win, again.

Whites will keep winning. Until they don’t. Whites will keep their hands around the throats of African-Americans, pushing our children’s faces into the mud. Until they lose their grip.

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But they will lose their grip, eventually. And on that day, you better hope black people act better than white people. You better hope African-Americans have not fully “assimilated” to white culture. You better hope there’s merely reckoning, and not retribution.

‘Black lives don’t matter,’ lawyer says after jury awards $4 in police killing [CNN]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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