The murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd and the hate crime in Central Park against Christian Cooper are equal sides of the same ridiculously common coin. Desensitized and terrified police don’t value black lives as human, and those privileged enough to have those same police on speed dial, call them with extreme prejudice.

I am so tired.

Isn’t there enough death in the world, literally at this very instant, without more police shoving their knees onto someone’s neck, or white women playing into the hands of authoritarian and patriarchal racism, or armed idiots gunning people down for being in the streets or sitting in their homes or getting pulled over or looking suspicious?

I’m tired of fearing for my friends and family and strangers I’ve never met, but know all the same.

Carolyn “The Original Karen” Bryant Donham was presumably haunted and guilty everyday of her long life the second she lied in 1955 and condemned Emmett Till, a black boy, to die horribly for whistling at her when he did nothing. Amy Cooper weaponized that exact same lie in Central Park, the difference being Christian Cooper was lucky enough to have recorded it and lived.

This white-man-made power struggle has been playing out in a vicious tired ass loop for over 400 years, and we’re still no closer to ending it in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed thousands and completely ostracized others.

Why do some cops kill people when they’re scared or indifferent to someone who’s a perceived threat, whether it’s a brown child playing with a toy gun or an unarmed grown black man laid out and cuffed underneath them? Yet and still, plenty of police don’t shoot or tear gas anti-mask protestors strapped with automatic rifles.

I’m so tired that if I write too much about it I’ll be too pissed off to finish this and end up chucking my laptop into the freaking wall.

The sad thing is that that kind of impotent rage does nothing but pop a few more hairs off my head with stress, and I flat out refuse to let some bullshit racist country and their policing tactics send me and mine to early graves. I don’t want to have to fight against every white person or cop I come across, that’s too taxing. I just want to live.

I’d rather not be a reflection of internecine hatred.

Change the way police are trained so that no one else is strangled to death, gasping for mercy. Arrest and convict murderers. Rewrite those stupid laws. Pass legislation that makes it illegal to call the cops on innocent people.

How much longer are you, comfortable and complacent, going to let this shit slide?

Like for real, c’mon son.

By Ariama Long, staff reporter for Kings County Politics