The fatal police shootings of 37-year-old Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge (on Tuesday) & of 32-year-old Philando Castile in a Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb (on Wednesday) were both captured on video in all their gruesome detail. There is no question about the excessive use of police force.
When I first began writing about violence against Black youth & martial law in the Black community in the early 1990s, I was mocked as a fool. The violence was justified by the government as a war on drugs under the guise of fighting “narco-terrorists” & most white people bought it, including liberals. Many police departments around the US resisted it at the time, saying there was no evidence of gang activity in their area.
Today, there isn’t even a pretense of fighting drug gangs but only a blatant, ruthless disregard for the lives of Blacks–& not just youth.
I am reposting my original article from 1992 which appeared in a Harvard student publication & in 2007 in the Minneapolis Black newspaper to provide background to the war against the Black community:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/mary-scully/the-war-on-black-youth/267267043287137