Cortney Lamar Charleston: “Forgive my language in this poem, as I typically try to steer away of cussing too much, but hopefully you can understand where I’m coming from with this one. After all, is that not what poetry is: a hopeful act no matter how blue? That being said, it deeply saddens me to witness yet another black person being killed due to use of excessive and/or negligent force on the part of law enforcement, particularly because the images of this have been projected across so many media outlets—it really is traumatic to witness as a black person, and is just one in a long list of entries of black and brown bodies killed without real (or good) reasons why. But I suppose to some people, the Scott video is as enlightening as it is shocking. It shows that not all dark-skinned ‘suspects and assailants’ were always ‘reaching for the cop’s gun’ or ‘reaching for his taser’ or ‘reaching for a weapon,’ which is the typical script that is continuously repeated in these incidents (it was here as well, until the video proved otherwise). Perhaps, as an exercise, it would benefit us all to ask ourselves if the victims feared for their lives at the hands of officers, as we hear that often in the other direction already (as in this case, before the video surfaced). We need to ask why that seems so plausible, if we truly believe in this nation, deep down, that black and brown people are all a criminal element until proven ‘decent.’ We need to ask ourselves how un-American our conceptions of certain groups of people are. We need not to run from this. We need to face it. If we agree that ‘all lives matter,’ then we consequently need to believe ‘black lives matter.’ The first statement necessitates the second, and if you don’t believe the latter to be true, or you attempt to downplay it, then you do disservice to the former, unintentionally or not.” (website)
