Sterling, Castile, and Trump
I was traveling yesterday, and so I’m catching up on the last two days of news.
- A police officer shot Alton Sterling in Louisiana. He sold CDs. One police officer held him down, on the ground, on his back, while the other officer shot him.
- In Minnesota, a police officer shot Philando Castile after pulling him over for a traffic violation.
- In Ohio, an angry Donald Trump responds after he tweeted an anti-Semitic image of Hillary Clinton from a white supremacist group. He blasts the media for their criticism of the image: “They’re racial profiling, they’re profiling. Not us.”
How is this even possible? Two black men are killed by police. Brutally and violently. And a billionaire white man, with every privilege in the world, says he’s the victim.
Of course, racial profiling refers to the practice of law enforcement officials targeting individuals for suspicion of a crime based on race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. This sort of brutal systemic racism has been endemic throughout our history. Now, we have camera phones, so we can’t ignore it. The horrific images pulse through our social media news feeds, along with vacation selfies and baby pictures.
