Original Article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/31/how-could-they-thats-not-question-head-heart/
"Systemic racism does terrible, dehumanizing things to the souls of those who are caught in its net. And it’s impossible to watch even a few minutes of the video footage captured during Nichols’s arrest and not weep over the cruelty and disregard with which he was treated."
"“Sit up, bro,” one officer is heard saying on the videotape. He uses the same term of easy familiarity with Nichols as the cops employ with each other, as if to suggest that the fight was somehow fair, as if Nichols must surely be fine. “Sit up, man,” an officer says, using a word that rings both hollow and cruel. If only these officers had seen him as a man when they were beating him, instead of as some inanimate object, some detritus."
"The failures in the country’s police forces cannot be reduced to a matter of race, even as race is fundamental to the way in which people experience both law enforcement and criminal justice."
"Race helps distinguish whether a person has faith that the police will see them as citizens worthy of respect, will empathize when they call for help and will act when they plead for aid. The police are part of the substructure that helps hold up the country’s social hierarchy, its strict delineation of power and privilege that is stubbornly unyielding to money, education and politics."
"the author Isabel Wilkerson noted, America’s caste system “is about the deadly dehumanization of the subordinated caste that allows almost any atrocity to be inflicted upon them — by anyone in any group, including their own, to uphold the caste system and to maintain one’s own place, however marginal, within it.”
"History long ago defined Whiteness as an invaluable asset, affording one a foothold on the top rung of the ladder. Just one drop of Blackness was an inescapable burden. The order was set. Over time, the caste system has encouraged colorism. It has caused some Black immigrants, hoping to stay at least one rung from the bottom of the social hierarchy, to carefully distinguish themselves from Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved. It drives the Black cabbie to pass up the Black man just trying to get a ride home. It helped spawn the old saw about only having to do two things in life: stay Black and die."
"The accused killers are Black, just like her son. And if these young Black men can’t see through the scrim of history and race and policing to salvage a shred of empathy, then who can?"
