Shootings Further Divide a Nation Torn Over Race

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Times:

The week started with scenes from a cellphone video of an African-American man lying on the ground being fatally shot by a Louisiana police officer, and an astonishing Facebook Live feed of a woman in Minnesota narrating after her African-American boyfriend was killed by an officer during a traffic stop.

 

It ended with horrific live television coverage of police officers’ being gunned down by at least one sniper at what had been a peaceful march protesting the police shootings.

 

The convulsive events further divided a nation already torn over race and law enforcement, raising anguished pleas for unity and echoes of the protests and divisions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The New York Post’s front page blared “CIVIL WAR.” The Drudge Report had the headline “Black Lives Kill.” In Minnesota on Thursday night, some protesters had chanted, “Kill the police.”

 

“Even in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a lot of tension around policing and civil rights and the antiwar movement, we’d never seen anything like what happened in Dallas,” said Darrel Stephens, the executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and an instructor at Johns Hopkins University.

 

David O. Brown, the Dallas police chief, said that the sniper suspect killed after a standoff with police had said he was upset at white people. “The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Chief Brown said.

 

In the hours after the ambush, the public was stunned, agonizing over what had happened.

 

“Our profession is hurting,” Chief Brown said. “Dallas officers are hurting. We are heartbroken. There are no words to describe the atrocity that occurred to our city. All I know is that this must stop, this divisiveness between our police and our citizens.”

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And the media need to stop enabling it.