How could five police officers beat a man to death earlier this month in Memphis? The answer is so obvious people overlook it: because they thought they could. Obviously, since they were in front of numerous witnesses — each other, the cameras they wore, bystanders — and still did what they did. Not impulsively or momentarily but over many excruciating minutes.
As to why the five beat Tyre Nichols, 29, a FedEx worker stopped by police while driving home from a park — possibly after some traffic infraction, though there’s no evidence of that — numerous possibilities present themselves.
The top five — there are more — in no particular order:
1) because they’re cops.
2) because Nichols was Black.
3) because he might have questioned them or hesitated following their orders, which gets some police officers mad.
4) because the cops were in a group and so reinforced each other’s violent behavior.
5) because we live in a racist society where the lives of Black people aren’t seen as significant.
That last one might seem improbable because the five cops, fired from the force and charged with second degree murder — things move faster in Tennessee — are themselves Black.
That last detail figured prominently in the reportage of the release of the video Friday night. Why not? It’s news. Usually, officers who kill Black citizens are white, which should not be surprising, as police departments are typically white clubs.
In Chicago, a city that is 30 percent Black, only 20 percent of the Chicago Police Department is Black. Nationwide, the figure is 12 percent.
Implied in the coverage is that Black officers would somehow be more sympathetic to their victim. Remember Reason No. 1. Police officers will be the first to tell you that their race is not Black or white, but blue.
Notice how in Tennessee, as with George Floyd, or Rodney King for that matter, there were a lot of officers involved. Making none of them responsible — in their own eyes — to the citizen they were supposedly being paid to serve and protect. Their only concern was each other.
Racism infects the downtrodden in society as well as the dominant class. Just as Jews can be anti-Semitic (hello Stephen Miller) Blacks can unconsciously absorb the diminishment of themselves and their own worth that has warped our nation’s attitudes and policies for 400 years. How could they not?
Reaction across the political spectrum was pretty much as you’d expect.
The far left wants to defund the police — Black communities are supposed to build their own law enforcement apparatus from scratch, apparently, or go without, which seems more punishment than reform. Communities want police officers, generally, because generally police are keeping them safe, not beating them to death after routine traffic stops.
In the middle, reaction centered on the human horror of the crime. Either watching or not watching the excruciating video (I watched. Recommendation: don’t, unless it’s your job and you have to) where the dying man cries out for his mother as the indifferent officers fist-bump each other.
The far right, needless to say, skipped over the compassion for human tragedy portion of the program and went straight to blaming the victim — why didn’t Nichols cooperate with authority? — and presenting themselves as the true victims. The typical whataboutism: no charges filed when Ashli Babbitt was killed during the Jan. 6 insurrection. It’s unfair!
Asking why Nichols didn’t immediately comply, if indeed that is the case, is rich coming from those who can’t bring themselves to accept official election results after years of investigation.
As for Babbitt, she was part of a mob trying to shut down American democracy, not a motorist returning home from a park. The hypocrisy is impressive, a yawning Grand Canyon of unexamined contradiction between the standards they demand of others and those applied to themselves.
If I had to pick one reason, I’d go with No. 5. A nation where a slogan as modest as “Black Lives Matter” sparks furious backlash shouldn’t act surprised when people in authority behave as if Black lives don’t matter.
Where even being sensitive to the hardships imposed by history on Black Americans can be given a derisive label, “woke,” and denounced.
Where teaching that history can be squelched lest any student be made to feel bad about the actions of their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.
Black History Month starts Wednesday. Not a moment too soon.
