The execution of Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s backyard is only one of the 277 cases of individuals being shot by the police in 2018. This shooting of an unarmed black man is just the latest evidence of the disposal of black lives in American society.
Black Americans make up merely 12 percent of the population, yet they made up 33 percent of unarmed individuals gunned downed by law enforcement in 2017. In Clark’s case, the supposed presence of a gun threatened the lives of the policemen, but this “gun” was merely a cell phone.
The centrality of a gun’s perceived presence in cases like Stephon Clark, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling bring up the question of if black Americans truly even have the right to bear arms in America.
No other group of Americans, other than perhaps Native Americans, have had to work as hard as black Americans to defend themselves from state violence in America. From the end of the Civil War through the latter half of the 20th century, black Americans have had to arm themselves for protection against white supremacy.
In a recent interview with CNN, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice recounted her encounter of black men defending their community.
“During segregation, my father and his friends defended the community, the neighborhood, with guns against White Night Riders because you couldn’t count on the Birmingham Police to do that for you.”
Just like with most constitutional rights, as people of color began to assert gun rights, governments all over the nation began to enact laws to prevent black Americans from having them. Ironically, it is the strict gun regulation enacted to suppress black rights that the majority of gun-loving white Americans fight today.
Even today, law abiding black gun owners are subject to discrimination. In her 2015 book “Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline” sociologist Jennifer Carlson found that “law-abiding men of color are … more likely to be harassed simply for choosing to carry a gun. They must navigate the widespread presumptions that they are criminals and that their guns are illegally possessed or carried.”
Castile was a licensed gun owner who was shot instantaneously even after alerting the policeman of his legal weapon that was stored in a compartment. Did the NRA or other pro-gun activists defend him? Not in the least. Black lives are disposable, and the rights of black Americans are second-class because of white privilege.
Shootings like Clark’s remind us that we could be legally killed at any moment, and we have no system in place to help or defend us. Today a black man holding a gun or a cell phone or anything is punishable by death. There is no chance for due process when you are dead. There is no chance to tell your side of the story when you are dead.
Fact is, it does not matter whether a black person is armed, the color of their skin is apparently a threat to police. In the recent case of Clark, it was such a threat that six shots in the back were needed to eliminate him.
Frankly speaking, a black person, armed or unarmed, is apparently more threatening than a man who walks into a Florida school and slaughters teenagers. A black person is more threatening than a man who walks into a South Carolina church and murders believers. The people who commit crimes like that are apparently good enough to live another day.
Justin Franklin is a 19-year-old political communication freshman from Memphis, Tennessee.
