Photo: Protesters gather during a march for Jayland Walker, July 6, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
Black America has long complained about the difference in the way the police deal with Black people versus white people. The stark contraction seems to be becoming more obvious to the rest of the world, particularly since armed white mass murders are often taken into custody without violence inflicted upon them, while unarmed Black men and women find themselves killed in encounters with police during such routine situations as traffic stops.
The Black Panthers used to saying there needed to be a “heightening the contradictions” in order to bring about revolutionary change. Black Americans are “heightening the contradictions.” Take the contradiction between the 90 shots fired at unarmed Black man Jaylan Walker by the police in Akron, Ohio, during a June 27 traffic stop while just days later the police conducted a peaceful takedown of the armed mass shooter in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4.
“It’s heightening the contradictions and making the people aware of the system’s faults…We recognize that this is the last thing the pigs (police) want to see, and we know that we’re educating the white community…,” wrote Philip S. Foner in the 1970 book “The Black Panthers Speak” in regard to the support the Party was receiving during the trial of BPP Chairman Bobby Seale, who had been charged by the fed with conspiracy charges related to anti-Vietnam War protests in Chicago, Illinois, during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The BPP contended that Seale was treated differently than white protesters. “They see Bobby Seale being framed,” Foner wrote of the BPP new white supporters.
The most recent contradiction is the police killing of Walker, a Black man killed while fleeing from police in comparison the arrest of Highland Park mass shooter Robert E. Crimo.
After killing six people in a shooting attack on an Independence Day parade in Highland Park Crimo, 22, was detained after a brief chase, NewsOne reported.
his was far from the first case of a white mass killer being arrested without incident. Among the many others is white supremacist Dylann Roof who on June 17, 2015, shot up a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African Americans churchgoers. He was arrested.
Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide, a 2021 NPR investigation has found. At least 75 percent of the officers were white.
Black people are killed by police more than twice the rate of white people, The Root reported.
Black people are Twitter are speaking out about the blatant contradictions between police treatment of Black citizen and whites.
“Over and over again, these white shooters are peacefully taken into custody. While unarmed Black men are shot dead,” tweeted radio host and activist Joe Madison.
“He’s lucky he’s not a Door Dash driver running away from police unarmed, otherwise he would have been shot 90 times and filled with 60 bullets,” tweeted journalist Jemele Hill, comparing Crimo’s arrest to Walker’s killing by police.
Bishop Talbert Swan, prelate of the Church of God in Christ serving as the bishop of the Nova Scotia Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction in Canada, also compared the two incidents, “A man got pulled over for a traffic violation and was shot 90 times and murdered by police. A man murdered 6 people and was gently arrested by police. One man is white. One man is Black. Which man is dead? America.”
“Police apprehended a man suspected of killing 6 and wounding 24 without shooting him. And after a brief chase. I didn’t want police to kill him. But I also know #JaylandWalker should be alive, and his body not riddled with 60 bullets,” tweeted Bernice King, daughter of the late Civil Rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo: Protesters gather during a march and rally for Jayland Walker, July 6, 2022, in New York. Walker, 25, was shot and killed by police June 27 after a traffic stop in Akron, Ohio. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
