Taking the Life of the Other

At the age of 65, I saw the "race riots" of the 60s and now am seeing them lived out again in the 2020 version.  This version is much more difficult to watch.  The look of anger on the faces is familiar like  old friends that I haven't seen in a while but they still look exactly the same.  The police continue to fight to retain white power at any cost and the blacks just want the world for an instant to acknowledge that systematic racism exists.  They are worlds apart - still.  In the 50 year interval I have seen the killing of black men and women with a variety of  methods.  I have always been stunned by the horrific violence of it.  Black men were snatched by the KKK in the dead of night, their faces illuminated by burning torches and strung from trees to be "Strange Fruit."  Then the police moved to clubs and on to guns.  The violent beating of Rodney King in 1991 is still a visceral scene in my mind's eye.  The men and women that I have seen killed with guns or choke holds on the eventing news by our public servants is too many to list.  And the result has always been the same.  Death by racism and the white officers walk away unscathed.  Few go to trial and those that do are never convicted.  And so it continues unabated.  But this killing of George Floyd is something new.  No violence.  No gun, or club, or rope.  No look of anger or distain.  Hands in pockets, completely relaxed, with only one knee as the weapon of choice.  But the question remains the same, how is it that you are able to snuff out a life so easily?  You took away this human's existence like I would step on a bug.  There was no thought of his being a man, a son, a brother, a father.  

White America turned blacks into the other many generations ago.  No law or politician or even a black president has been able to change the status quo.  Slaves were lazy.  Freed African descendants were illiterate and unable to be taught.  Arrests and criminal behavior was proof that we should be protected from them.  Government housing and poverty during a time of affirmative action was the "See, I told you so." nail in the coffin.  Any blacks that were able to lift themselves out of poverty were seen as the exceptions to the rule.  And I have witnessed all of these manifestations of prejudice in one solitary lifetime.  So we have remained in this place hovering between the academic belief that all are created equal but living the palpable fear of releasing, even for a moment, our hold on white power.  We have been here in this very spot that we were in 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 400 years ago.  Nothing has changed beyond the mode and extreme ease of murder.