Black Lives Still Don’t Matter in America

In 2024, it’s good to be a white man who kills unarmed Black people in America. On the acquittal of Daniel Penny who choked Jordan Neely to death.

In 2024, it’s good to be a white man who kills unarmed Black people in America.

That’s my hot take upon learning of Daniel Penny’s jury acquittal in the choking death of street performer Jordan Neely. The NAACP wrote the acquittal “has effectively given license for vigilante justice to be waged on the Black community without consequence.”

Unsurprisingly, MAGA and conservative white men on social media are celebrating the acquittal as a form of justice, because their community has never been the victim of widespread, systematic violence and police brutality without accountability or justice. Republican officials see Penny as a hero. It’s a return to the “good ol’ days” when a white mob could kidnap, torture, and even kill Black teenagers like Emmitt Till for allegedly whistling at a white woman and then turn around and be acquitted by an all-white jury.

In this case, the manslaughter charge was dismissed by the judge because the jury was deadlocked. Penny was acquitted of criminally negligent homicide. Neely was a poor, homeless street performer suffering from depression and schizophrenia, whose mental illness worsened after the brutal murder of his mother by her boyfriend who stuffed her body in a suitcase. Although Neely didn’t touch a subway passenger, he threw his jacket on the floor, said he was hungry, and declared he didn’t care anymore if he lived or died. One rider alleged he made a lunging movement that alarmed her and her son which prompted Penny to put him in a chokehold that eventually killed him. He’s dying, let him go!” said one subway rider in the video, but Penny didn’t. A muffin, not a gun or a knife, but a muffin was discovered in Neely’s pocket.

We’ve seen this story before. In Minneapolis, Officer Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as he pleaded for his life. Bystanders also shouted that he couldn’t breathe, but it didn’t matter. Like Neely, he was also unarmed. In Georgia, Ahmed Arbery was hunted and killed by three white women who thought he was a burglar because he was jogging while black in an Atlanta neighborhood. Initially, the former District Attorney George Barnhill advised the police department to make no arrests. The only reason they were caught was because the video of the modern-day lynching was eventually released to the public by a local attorney.

Our country loves the police and tells us to back the Blue except of course when they try to protect the Capitol from violent insurrectionists incited by Donald Trump to overthrow a free and fair election. Then MAGA mocks them and ignores their injuries, pain, and trauma. Law enforcement is adulated unless of course they’re part of “the deep state” that is allegedly victimizing Donald Trump by trying - and failing - to hold him accountable for his numerous, unpunished crimes. We care deeply about the “anarchy” in our “violent cities” when the suspects are Black people, Muslims, or Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants who are “raping” the country. But, Kyle Rittenhouse is a MAGA hero for shooting and killing two men and wounding another at a BLM protest in Wisconsin. We are “tough on crime” unless the criminal is a white man such as Daniel Perry who was convicted by a jury of our peers for murdering Garrett Foster, who was attending a Black Lives Matter rally in Texas. Governor Abbott decided to pardon the killer who was serving his 25-year sentence because white vigilante terror is a cultural tradition of the South that can’t be disturbed by “woke” concepts of justice, fairness, and the rule of law.

As Rage Against the Machine sang in Killing the Name Of many years ago, “Those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.” Just last week, the Department of Justice released the findings of their investigation into the Memphis Police Department concluding they had a history of using excessive force and discrimination against Black people. That investigation was prompted after five Black police officers beat Tyre Nicholes to death after a traffic stop in 2023. The DOJ’s report says “Memphis police officers regularly violate the rights of the people they are sworn to serve.”

Let’s imagine what would have happened if a Black marine had choked a white man to death on a Subway who was unarmed and was wearing, say, a MAGA hat. How would this country respond? How would right-wing media frame it? Would white men be celebrating his acquittal? Or, let’s imagine if a black teenager shot and killed two white men at a MAGA rally.

As I’m writing this essay, police have named a white, Italian American, Luigi Mangione, as a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson. From his social media posts, Mangione appears to be a well-educated, privileged, red-pilled consumer of right-wing media. He isn’t Antifa or a Black man. Currently, “Free Him” and #Patriot are trending on social media. What would’ve been the response if he was a Black or Brown man? Hell, how would this country have responded if a bunch of Black and Muslim men violently assaulted Capitol police, took part in a failed insurrection, and took a shit in the US Capitol?

We all know the answer.

This is the United States of America, a country with a two-tiered, unequal system of justice that has a history of fueling, excusing, and exalting white rage and grievance especially when it comes at the expense of innocent Black blood and pain. There is little comfort I can offer to Jordan Neley, Ahmed Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others because they are dead. My words cannot heal the pain of their loved ones, families, and friends.

But, at the very least, we can be a witness to injustice and do our best to both call it out and demand better from our institutions and leaders who continue reminding us that not all lives matter or are worth the same in 2024 America.