The police statements after events like the Castillo killing/inevitable officer acquittal are rarely made to reassure POC but to calm moderate whites. There are no promises of better outcomes,  that another POC won’t be pulled over for having a black nose or shot in front of their child because of what an officer has a “split second” to decide. Basically the argument is “sucks to be us.”

And I’ve had it with the solipsistic narcissism of how shooting a man to death in front of his child and the child’s mother is really a bummer for the cop. Even if he’s in therapy dealing with it, it’s hardly as relevant as what the dead man and his loved ones are experiencing. I also am highly suspicious of how much this truly has affected the officer. I mean Bill Cosby is probably stressed out but that’s all about him, his reputation, career and liberty, not the women he raped.

If the cop offered to help raise the now fatherless child like Joe West on The Flash, that’s one thing but that’s not even a consideration.

We continue to debate whether racism or “white privilege” even exists when predominately white juries not only consistently let officers walk for these killings but never express the consistent level of outrage or demands for change that we see as a the result of airline overbookings. I can almost understand the cognitive dissonance and classism behind safely assuming you’ll never be busted for selling loose cigarettes or CDs, but if white Americans really believed they had as much chance of being blown away — again in front of their child — during a routine traffic stop or their child could be killed for playing with a toy gun in a public park, they wouldn’t stand for it.