Within 24 hours, two more young black men were killed by policemen, one in Baton Rouge and the other in Minnesota. Both killings were videoed, and it is very hard to see why the officers had to use guns to deal with these stops.
In 2015, according to a Guardian study, 1,134 black men were killed by U.S. police; their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.
My stomach turns into knots and my heart aches when I hear of these killings. My own son is a black man of 25 years old who lived in St. Paul when he attended Macalester College. Despite my consistent warnings to “keep your hands on the wheel, and move very slowly” if stopped by a police car, I know this is no guarantee to keep him from harm.
Someone asked me why I had a Black Lives Matter sign in front of my house. “Don’t all lives matter?” Yes, I responded, all lives do matter, but many police and others don’t seem to accept that black lives also matter. Until they do, our young men will continue to face harassment and loss of life.
Elliot Fratkin
Northampton