Alton B. Sterling
Roxane Gay
July 6, 2016
OVER
the past several years, we have borne witness to grainy videos of what
“protect and serve” looks like for black lives — Tamir Rice, Walter
Scott, Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, to name a few. I don’t think any of
us could have imagined how tiny cameras would allow us to see, time and
again, injustices perpetrated, mostly against black people, by police
officers. I don’t think we could have imagined that video of police
brutality would not translate into justice, and I don’t think we could
have imagined how easy it is to see too much, to become numb. And now,
here we are.
There is a new name to add to this list — Alton B. Sterling,
37, killed by police officers in Baton Rouge, La. It is a bitter
reality that there will always be a new name to that list. Black lives
matter, and then in an instant, they don’t.
Mr.
Sterling was selling CDs in front of a convenience store early Tuesday
morning. He was tasered and pinned down by two police officers, who the
police say were responding to a call. He was shot, multiple times, in
the chest and back. He died, and his death looks and feels as though he
were executed.
Mr.
Sterling leaves behind family and children who will forever know that
their father was executed, that the image of their father’s execution is
now a permanent part of the American memory, that the image of their
father’s execution may not bring them justice. Justice, in fact, already
feels tenuous. The body cameras the police officers were wearing “dangled,” according to the police department’s spokesman, L’Jean McKneely,
so we don’t know how much of the events leading to Mr. Sterling’s death
were captured. The Baton Rouge police department also has the
convenience store surveillance video, which it is not, as of yet,
releasing. Mr. McKneely said the officers were not questioned last night because “we give officers normally a day or so to go home and think about it.”
It
has been nearly two years since Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo.,
and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It has been nearly two
years of activists putting themselves on the front lines as police
officers continue to act against black lives with impunity. At the same
time, according to The Guardian, there have been 560 people killed by police in the United States in 2016.
Tuesday
night I heard about Mr. Sterling’s death, and I felt so very tired. I
had no words because I don’t know what more can be said about this kind
of senseless death.
I
watched the cellphone video, shot by a bystander and widely available
online, of the final moments of a black man’s life. I watched Alton
Sterling’s killing, despite my better judgment. I watched even though it
was voyeuristic, and in doing so I made myself complicit in the
spectacle of black death. The video is a mere 48 seconds long, and it is
interminable. To watch another human being shot to death is grotesque.
It is horrifying, and even though I feel so resigned, so hopeless, so
out of words in the face of such brutal injustice, I take some small
comfort in still being able to be horrified and brought to tears.
We
know what happens now because this brand of tragedy has become routine.
The video of Mr. Sterling’s death allows us to bear witness, but it
will not necessarily bring justice. There will be protest as his family
and community try to find something productive to do with sorrow and
rage. Mr. Sterling’s past will be laid bare, every misdeed brought to
light and used as justification for police officers choosing to act as
judge, jury and executioner — due process in a parking lot.
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