I’m black, my brother’s white … and he’s a cop who shot a black man on duty |
I’m black, my brother’s white … and he’s a cop who shot a black man on duty
The Guardian
204-08-25
Zach Stafford, Writer
Chicago, Illinois
I never thought that my brother would be one of those police officers. He was supposed to be different because of me
My white brother loved black people more than I did when we were growing up. As a black interracial child of the south – one who lived in a homogenous white town – I struggled with my own blackness. I struggled even more with loving that blackness. But my brother, Mitch, didn’t. He loved me unapologetically. He loved me loudly.
He also loved screwing with other people’s expectations. Whenever we met new people or I joined a social situation he was in, Mitch would make sure I was standing right next to him for introductions and say, “This is Zach, my brother” – and then go silent with a smirk…
..And then, years later and far away in Chicago, I got the phone call: my brother, now a cop, had shot an unarmed black man back in Tennessee.
Hearing about black men dying is never exactly a surprise. Every day, you see the news stories: On the news, black men die while getting Skittles. On the news, black men die in choke-holds. On the news, black men die for playing their music too loud. It seems black men die on the news more than they do almost anything else on the news, even with a black president in office. Every 28 hours, a black man is killed by a police officer in America…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: Tennessee, The Guardian, Zach Stafford