“It is impossible to be unarmed when your blackness is the weapon they fear the most”
As Ahmaud Arbery’s lifeless body laid in the middle of the road the first thing his killers thought to do was turn him over to check if he had a weapon. It seems absurd to check if a dead man has a weapon but a weapon is the most important piece to racist vigilantes like Gregory and Travis McMichael’s story. A black man with a weapon is all a white man in America needs to get away with murder. Whether that weapon is a gun, a knife, phone, a camera, a pen or a pencil. It doesn’t matter, whatever a white man says is a weapon is a weapon… as long as a black man is holding it. What many people fail to realize is what a racist white man really views as a weapon is the color of our skin, so to him it does not matter what is in a black man's hands.
Ahmaud Arbery was not killed because he was a suspected thief, he was not killed because he appeared to have a weapon, he was not killed because he “violently attacked” Travis McMichael. Ahmaud Arbery was killed because he was black. He was hunted and gunned down like an animal as his ancestors were before him, because his justice system allows for the slaughtering of black men with little to no repercussions for the perpetrators.
Minutes before Ahmaud’s death several calls came in stating that a black man was running on the street. The 911 dispatcher asked several times what exactly Ahmaud was doing wrong and the only answer the callers could provide was that he was a black man running on their street. To this day, being a black man in America still remains a crime. My only hope is that the justice system does not fail Ahmaud Arbery as it has so many other young black men.
Sources
Barajas, A & Vera A. (May, 6, 2020). Video posted online as DA says case of Georgia man who was chased and killed will go to grand jury. https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/05/us/ahmaud-arbery-jogging-georgia-shooting/index.html
Bynum, R. (May 6, 2020). U.S. family calls shooting death of Black man a ‘modern lynching,’ demands arrests. Retrieved from: https://globalnews.ca/news/6914766/ahmaud-arbery-shooting-georgia-family/
Hobbs, L. (April 29, 2020). Dispatcher: 'What was he doing wrong?'. Retrieved from: https://thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/dispatcher-what-was-he-doing-wrong/article_fe51cdd4-3bb6-5815-9dec-ddcdc8f879f8.html
Thank you for bringing awareness to this sensitive subject
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