@CAleaseWriter Like many, relief was my first reaction. Then my anger rose again at the thought that it took outrage from the entire world and a year for there to be any accountability for Mr. Floyd’s murder, while in the meantime, so many other Black people were murdered with impunity. For me, black people were always meant to receive injustice when you reveal the words and the nature of their connotations, which are a part of its definition: inequity, corruption, cruelty, brutality, tyranny, despotism, suppression, exploitation, bias, prejudice and bigotry.
Indeed, while his trial was in session, twenty-year-old father, Duante Wright, was murdered in the same county. While the verdict was being read, Makiyah Bryant, a sixteen-year-old girl, was killed by police in Columbus, Ohio. I am exhausted by these needless deaths of Black people and the blatant expressions of deference, not only for the police who commit these offenses and murders but also for white police officers for white people who shoot and kill masses of people or storm the Capitol in Washington. It never seems to matter in those instances whether the law justifies lethal force because they do not resort to it in the first place. Lethal force, it appears, is reserved for us.
Dr. Cynthia Alease Smith is an antiracism essayist and educator, a writer, novelist, and editor, specializing in literary contemporary fiction, nonfiction stories inspired by real events, and occasional ghostwriting. Dr. Smith’s writing includes a novel, “The Gatekeeper,” published in 2009, “With Eyes from Both Sides,” a true-life story of Philadelphia’s most prolific gangster queen, Thelma Wright, published in 2011, and another novel, “The Fosters,” published in 2013. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology, summa cm laude, with honors from Kaplan University, Davenport, Iowa, and is a member of the Epsilon Delta Pi National Honor Society for Computer Sciences, National Scholars Honor Society, and the Alpha Beta Kappa National Honor Society.
Indeed, while his trial was in session, twenty-year-old father, Duante Wright, was murdered in the same county. While the verdict was being read, Makiyah Bryant, a sixteen-year-old girl, was killed by police in Columbus, Ohio. I am exhausted by these needless deaths of Black people and the blatant expressions of deference, not only for the police who commit these offenses and murders but also for white police officers for white people who shoot and kill masses of people or storm the Capitol in Washington. It never seems to matter in those instances whether the law justifies lethal force because they do not resort to it in the first place. Lethal force, it appears, is reserved for us.
Dr. Cynthia Alease Smith is an antiracism essayist and educator, a writer, novelist, and editor, specializing in literary contemporary fiction, nonfiction stories inspired by real events, and occasional ghostwriting. Dr. Smith’s writing includes a novel, “The Gatekeeper,” published in 2009, “With Eyes from Both Sides,” a true-life story of Philadelphia’s most prolific gangster queen, Thelma Wright, published in 2011, and another novel, “The Fosters,” published in 2013. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology, summa cm laude, with honors from Kaplan University, Davenport, Iowa, and is a member of the Epsilon Delta Pi National Honor Society for Computer Sciences, National Scholars Honor Society, and the Alpha Beta Kappa National Honor Society.