The hate that killed Tyre Nichols

By James Trice, CEO Public Policy Project James_publicpolicyproject@msn.com

asked Rashad Shabazz, a geographer and scholar of African American studies at Arizona State University, to explore the societal conditions in which Black police officers could brutalize another Black man.

What could influence Black police officers to savagely beat a Black motorist?

Policing in the U.S. has, from its inception, treated

Black people as domestic enemies. From the the slave patrols, which some historians consider to be among the nation’s earliest forms of

As we embark on the 53rd celebration of Black History month – first proposed in 1969 and first celebrated in 1970 –passed by the US Congress in 1986, we are met with the harsh reality that anti-Blackness still permeates the soul and culture of America. The recent brutal beating and murder of Tyre Nichols -a Black man- on January 10, 2023, by five Black police officers in Memphis, TN, underscore the fact that the pathology of anti-Blackness is alive and well in the hearts and minds of some white folk as well as some Black folk in America. Anti-Blackness is a byproduct of the false ideology of white supremacy and Black inferiority woven within the fabric of America, so much so that even the victims of this deadly ideology – some Black people- have internalized it.

James Baldwin

said, “The reason people think its important to be white is that they think it’s important not to be Black.” Anti-Black hate is as old as America and America as apple pie and baseball. You don’t need to go back to our history to see evidence of this pernicious reality. In 2015, Dylan Roof – a 21-year old white man- walked into a church in Charleston, SC, and murdered 9 Black people in cold blood. It was reported that the police officers who captured Roof treated him to fast food before escorting him to the police station.

In May 2022, a gunman -an 18-year-old white man- murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo, NY, supermarket, targeting Black people. There are other cases of