FIRED UP As the world crumbles, one white parent of a black son tries to make sense of it all. this because he won’t. Bunker Baby Boy will continue being divisive, continue blowing racist dog whistles from atop Mt. Twitter, and continue being the racist, sexist fool we’ve all come to despise but –– alarmingly –– who we just accept. A change of heart for him is still fun to think about. I actually pray for it. And I know I can’t be the only one. George Floyd’s murder –– by four police officers, not just one –– and the murders of countless other African-Americans by cops are making all of us, black and white and in between and beyond, as sick as a case of the ’rona. As most whites are clutching their pearls about the looting (“No, not Whole Foods!”), the rest of us are concerned about policing, race relations, and justice moving forward. Black lives are at stake.
Based on a recent analysis by the advocacy group Mapping Police Violence, African-Americans are nearly twice as likely to be killed by cops as a Latinx person and nearly three times more likely to die at the hands of police than a white person. The overall numbers are just as scary. Police kill all kinds of Americans, not just blacks. The next James Scott, Daniel Shaver, Brandon Stanley, or other white person to be murdered by law enforcement could be one of those pearl-clutching school marms pretending to be outraged by the destruction of Whole Foods but really just angry at African-Americans for being born African-American and for not expressing dissatisfaction with the status quo in a polite, calm, quiet manner, because that’s what white people do when they’re rowdy. They’re polite, calm, and quiet. They don’t pile into the streets, turn over cars, and torch them (Denver, 2014) or destroy property, steal shit, and torch buses (San Francisco, 2012) or torch and turn over more cars and destroy property (Vancouver, 2011) or dance on flipped-over cars (New Hampshire, 2014) or just riot over sports or just because (Lexington, 2012; Tennessee, 2012; Happy
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“independent voters” who got us into this mess in the first place. Even I would begin to entertain him. Even I would begin to listen to him. Understand, I would never vote for Bunker Baby. A little something to do with the two-dozen credible accusations of rape and sexual assault against him and tons of terrible policy decisions. However, I know that since just about everyone in this country has come to accept him as a monster, NBD, just about everyone would vote for him if he denounced white supremacy and acknowledged black America’s pain. That should be the GOP playbook moving forward. Landslide victory and control of the courts for the next four years and beyond would be guaranteed. Simple math. Simple human behavior. Simple simpletons. We don’t have to worry about any of
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truth. Police violence impacts African-Americans more than any other demographic. To answer why, look only to the suffering that African-Americans endured during two centuries of slavery and are still facing now nearly 160 years after emancipation. Whites in authority discriminated against blacks before passing down that authority to more discriminatory whites, who continued passing down authority to more discriminatory whites all the way up to the current occupant of the White House, a well-known racist. That guy, whose name I will no longer say and which has become a curse word in my household, could win the 2020 election unanimously, I’m talking nearly every single popular vote, if he were to come out and simply say, or tweet, “I reject any and all support from white supremacists, and my condolences go out to the black community that has been ravaged by police brutality, and worse, since the first slaves were ripped from their native lands and brought to our shores in 1619.” Just about everyone would vote for him. Perhaps all of those finicky battleground-state schlubs and
PHOTOS BY BROOKS BURRIS
FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY
STORY BY ANTHONY MARIANI
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