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| Photo by Tyre Nichols. |
The big reaction on the right to the murder of Tyre Nichols by the five Memphis police officers who beat him to death on the suspicion that he might have been "driving recklessly" has been to deny that racism had anything to do with it, because the cops in question were Black, like their victim.
"pure evil" isn't a concept you can use in social science--not really a concept at all, more a cry of helplessness
— Beep Beep Yer Yas (@Yastreblyansky) January 29, 2023
We heard the same thing after Freddie Gray was caught avoiding police and having a (legal) knife in his shirt pocket, and rattled to death—a ride so rough it severed his spine—in the police van taking him to the station in 2015, and three of the six cops involved, including the driver, were African American. But I think it's a good deal more anxious and urgent now, maybe because we're in the age of George Floyd and they're feeling more threatened than before.
