This week, we’ve witnessed another onslaught of senseless killings of Black people by police in the United States. It’s hard not to feel numb when watching execution-style shootings, like the one that happened on Tuesday to Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or the harrowing post-shooting Facebook Live video by Philando Castile’s girlfriend Lavish Reynolds in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every day there is another story. Another death. More inaction. Another example of how little our society does when people who have been stigmatized in our white supremacist culture with the label of “blackness” are killed. Why does this continue?
In the early 20th century, the NAACP used to hang a flag outside their New York headquarters the day after someone was lynched. It was a graphic symbol of what many people wanted to ignore. The NAACP began that practice in 1920 and stopped in 1938, but today the police continue to kill Black people with impunity.