Whenever the justification of white criminality intersects with black bodies, a loss of innocence is sure to follow. Botham Jean is the latest black man to succumb to such violence and personal scrutiny — posthumously.
Jean was gunned down at his home in Dallas earlier this month by Officer Amber Guyger , who claimed the death of the 26-year-old was a mishap that occurred after she accidentally entered his apartment. Mistaking it for her own home and wrongfully assuming Jean was an intruder, the off-duty officer allegedly fired her weapon, killing Jean.
Officer Amber Guyger has since been charged with manslaughter for Jean’s murder. The police department investigating the incident
obtained a warrant to search the victim’s home for items related to the case: Enter the whitewashed narrative denying black male victimhood in favor of white, female vindication.
According to CNN, the Dallas Police Department’s search turned up a smidgen of weed and a grinder — petty things that are now only being used to taint this young man’s image, no matter how pristine his reputation was in life. But let’s not forget these things were among two fired shell casings from officer Guyger’s smoking gun, and that Jean’s “blood [was] on the floor and a bullet hole in a wall,” which was marked as evidence — in his own home.
Source: YouTube | Inside Edition
In the white world of wrongdoing, hegemony and the tears of white women must be some intoxicating s**t. At the seedbed of white violence perpetrated against black people is the desire to flex dominance, maintain white supremacy, defend depravity and absolve problematic white women of their transgressions. Criminalizing and blaming black victims for their own deaths and demise is a strategic move; it is one of many ways white people white.
This has been the case throughout America’s perverted history, specifically during slavery, when apologists went extra hard to rationalize a system built on human chattel, by comparing black anatomy and physiology with animals. Thomas Jefferson outlined some of the most egregious theories in his Notes on the State of Virginia. During the Reconstruction era, as slaves transitioned into upwardly mobile negroes, a rash of white inferiority broke out. Black codes were established to suppress black mobility and corrupt blackness. Basically, white folks lost their shit around the idea of black socioeconomic advancement, vilifying black people for their ambition.
Jim Crow only further concretized the all-too-familiar concept that black people were less than human, as the dominant culture fiendishly pegged black citizens as no good, lazy, miscreants, who were only capable of servitude, shucking and jiving and sexual deviance. Rampant lynchings throughout the southern U.S. only reinforced the cultural disdain for blackness, with the wolf-crying tickets of white women as contributing factors. In more contemporary times, state-sanctioned violence has essentially emerged in the place of early racists to do the work of maligning black folks.
To Jean’s credit, he is remembered by his family as “a loving son and brother, a hard worker and a powerful singer, who enjoyed helping others.” A native of St. Lucia, he migrated to the U.S. and pursued his education at Harding University in Arkansas. According to his minister, Jean was a humanitarian at heart.
Clearly, bud does not equal thug.
Despite this attempted smear campaign, there are five things I care far more about in this case than bud supposedly being found in Jean’s crib after he was shot dead:
1. The criminal isn’t being criminalized.
Where the f**k is the search warrant and report for Amber Guyger’s apartment? Instead of investigating the victim, perhaps the Dallas Police Department should probe the accused perpetrator. That is certainly the protocol when the alleged culprit is a civilian. Why does criminal-cop behavior get a pass?
2. Results of Guyger’s toxicology reports have yet to be publicized.
While Guyger blames fatigue for her murderous actions, her story still ain’t adding up. Mistaking one's own apartment — which is situated in a fixed location — for another one that is located on a whole different floor is really a stretch (read: full of s**t). The fact that she walked up a flight of stairs to get to Jeans’ apartment, opposed to her own crib, is questionable (read: suspect). If the police feel it’s necessary to analyze Jean’s personal history, then they should probably publicly scrutinize Guyger’s lifestyle — and give the people a right to do so, too.
3. The media is seemingly aiding and abetting the behavior of white women.
The innocent, pure white woman trope is a societal myth.The reality is white women should be recognized and held accountable for whatever crimes they may commit.
Historically, white women have long gotten away with heinous acts, proving that white men aren’t the only people who’ve been guilty of committing similar acts of terrorism on American soil. For instance, Carolyn Bryant Donham’s white lie led to the brutal slaying of 14-year-old Emmett Till. Brianna Brochu merely received a slap on the wrist for damn-near poisoning Chenell “Jazzy” Rowe to death. Some wicked wives of slaveholders were even physically violent against female slaves, or exhibited sexual predatory behavior toward male slaves.
Roguish white women must be stopped.
4. Justice for Botham seems a far-fetched concept.
Guyger potentially escaping conviction for the death of Jean because of her public service is a sorry-ass excuse, and an attempt to criminalize Jean via what appears to be an inconsequential investigation into his personal life showcases how the Department of Justice is neither fair nor just.
And Jean’s family is not the first black household to be subjected to this level of humiliation and degradation by the DOJ. In May, the family of Gregory Hill, a Florida man who was killed in his own home by police officers, was awarded $4.04. That’s just one of the many examples that informs us how much the black body is really worth to the U.S. court system.
The Department of Justice as we currently know it needs to be dismantled, and right now there is no amendment, band-aid or suture to close the holes of such a racially-biased, raggedy-a** system. Though seemingly irreparable, it is beyond time for the black collective to work together and transform this system, which has never served us.
5. Cops keep killing black people.
Police are often allowed to murder black people with impunity. Guyger shot Jean because he failed to comply with her verbal command, and like most law enforcers who have killed a black person, her odds of getting off scot-free are sorely evident. Researchers from The Washington Post and Bowling Green State University discovered of the thousands of killings that took place at the hands of on-duty police officers between 2005 and 2015, only 54 of those officers were prosecuted. The study also found that "in three-quarters of the reviewed cases, the race of the charged officer was white. Of those, two-thirds shot and killed a black person. In none of the cases did a black officer fatally shoot a white person." Furthermore, a study from the Department of Justice on police behavior in Ferguson, Missouri, revealed its police force not only targeted blacks, but and that “[o]fficers expect and demand compliance even when they lack legal authority.”
Black people are criminalized and policed at a much higher rate than white people, yet only account for about 13% of the overall population. How does that make any sense?
Stop killing black people. Need I say more?
Once upon a time, marijuana was used to criminalize black people. However, it’s now off the table; THC has been miraculously decriminalized by white people, who are now capitalizing off of it. Yet the Dallas Police Department still tried it. In Jean’s case though, there is much more at play than weed and paraphernalia. The only news to be concerned with is: A humble 26-year-old man was slaughtered his own house by a white female cop for no apparent reason. But sadly, though another unarmed black man was lynched, in 2018, hoping for justice is simply wishful thinking.
