When a cop murders a Black person in America, you can't separate it from the past 50 or 500 years. These are not instances taking place in a vacuum- they are entrenched in America's slave past, historical reality and nationalist imagination. They are it's legacy and identity.
It's cyclical and repetitive because the same structures that were built to preserve and serve the supremacy of whiteness- are still intact today. They denegrate Black life just the same; expressing themselves in these 'moments'. Hence COMPLETE ABOLITION is a NECESSITY.
Those patrols and night watches that surveilled and policed the enslaved became modern day police forces; the carceral state and the judicial system all collaborate to debilitate and suffocate communities of color + the marginalized.
Yet mainstream, middle/white America has the nerve to bring up orderly conduct now; to speak of rule of law, of tone and urge calm- when they witness some disobedience. Did these officers give any semblance of regard to George Floyd or Eric Garner or Daunte Wright??
As if America hasn't been on fire, at war with itself since the moment it bought the first African in shackles onto it's shores. As if property is worth more than irreplaceable life? On stolen land?
A place where for millions their existence is informed by the inheritance of the trauma of their ancestors being commodified and chastised on that very land?? When for so many their lives are made absolute chaos every day just because of who they are? What do you expect??
It's absolutely disgusting that the mainstream defines poor and marginalized people, solely through their rightful retaliation to the systemic/actual violence they are subjugated to every single day. They don't ever contextualize or humanize Black suffering, hurt or pain.