A Cruel Reminder That Black Bodies Don’t Mean Shit in America

Yesterday morning, additional body-cam footage from the night of Sterling Brown’s arrest was released by a Milwaukee TV station. The footage should be nothing surprising to anyone who has been keeping up with the times over the last, I don’t know, forever and a day. A black man was arrested for not much other than being black and then was treated as if he was less than human. Just look at this shit.

There’s a couple things in particular that stood out to me here.

1. Much like the Eric Garner incident, we see these officers holding him down even when he isn’t resisting. Thankfully in this case, they were “just” stepping on his ankle to prevent him from “resisting” and not basically sitting on his chest and preventing him from breathing. But regardless, it’s another case of an unarmed black man being handcuffed and unable to really move, but still being held down in some form to stop him from “resisting” even though no resisting is actually happening.
2. In the video, you can hear the officers talking about getting overtime for taking part in this arrest. One even is heard singing “money money money.” Then once they figured out who Brown was, they started to realize what could happen to them, saying “The bureau is coming out for this? … We’re trying to protect ourselves. Because he plays for the Bucks, and if he makes a complaint, it’s going to be a [redacted]. And then any little [redacted] thing that goes wrong is going to be, ‘Ooh, the Milwaukee Police Department is all racist … blah, blah, blah.’” They’re not worried that they executed a forceful arrest of a black man that could land them in hot water. They’re simply worried that because he’s an NBA player, he could actually do something about it. If that was me on the floor, they wouldn’t be afraid and/or scared of anything happening to them.

In addition to the video, we got some new photos of his injuries, including the marks on his back left by a taser.

So yeah, once again, police are doing whatever they want, whenever they want.

To them, this wasn’t a case of them unnecessarily and unlawfully harassing a man for being black.

To them, this was simply another night on the job. It was chance to earn a little bit more cash.

The other day I saw a tweet come across my timeline from a certain Fox News talking head asking why we have to live in a country where “racial division is the subtext of everything.” I’d like to ask different questions.

Why do we have to live in a country where black people are treated less than human?

Why do we have to live in a country where a person can “sit” in the highest office of the country and treat certain sects of his constituents like absolute shit (remember that parts of Puerto Rico still don’t have power)?

Why do we have to live in a country where a certain Fox News talking head who hashtags his own name in tweets can get paid thousands of dollars to spew nonsense on a daily basis?

But to answer the talking head’s original question. Only once we live in a world where black people are valued like members of society and aren’t treated as if they are less than nothing can we then live in a world where racial division isn’t the subtext to everything. As long as police officers and other people in this country treat other races as if they are lower than them, racial subtext will always exist because it’s quite simply a driving factor behind the actions of these people.

It’s always funny to me when people ask questions like this. They say it as if we want to live like this. As if we want to have to point out the injustices that are prevalent in American society. As if we want to be treated like shit. Trust me, if I never had to write an article like this ever again in my life, that would be a glorious day.

Unfortunately, however, that’s not the world we live in. Sorry not sorry that us bringing up the injustices seemingly makes y’all uncomfortable. So we’ll continue living like this for as long as we keep being treated like this. It’s as simple as that.