To be honest, I avoid the news cycle because there is too much propaganda to know what to trust, and knowing that people could not care less what happens to Black people, I would rather not be reminded. I found out about Renee Good only because of YouTube, and I was distressed to find out that observers were being shot because that is the only way to stay safe in chaos. Sadly, it was many more days until I found out about Keith Porter, Jr., and people can say what they want, but it matters that the end of this first year saw the murder of a Black man, and nobody talked about it until almost two weeks after the fact.
For those who talk about the fact that he had a gun, he lived in California, the second largest state in the empire. As a Texan–even an urban Texan–people shoot guns in the air to call in the new year. The state is big, gun rights advocates are everywhere, and that is just the way things are. I lived in an apartment complex in Austin, and there were several people firing guns into the air not just during the new year, but randomly throughout the year. Maybe I should have been afraid, but everyone was able to function safely and nothing happened. Never in my life do I want to own a gun, but this is the empire, and people own guns. The end.
Now consider that the gun owner was a Black man, and the individual who killed him with a gun was a white man. When people say that privilege is fake, and try to lie and say that they fail to see color, these kinds of incidents are the reason why nobody believes those liars. AR-15? There are pictures all over the internet that talk about dominant narrative beneficiaries being comfortable being seen with guns, but when it comes to a Black man? Even with all the nonsense being said, we still have to discuss how obnoxiously unbalanced both the situation and its coverage have been.
I will not talk about him or share his story because his family is doing what they can, as well as raising money, because it costs money to bury people and raise children. However, this is further proof that people can lie to themselves all they want, but Black people tend to always be found when violence is waiting. No one can justify that a Black man was killed by immigration enforcement for doing what everyone else was doing. Life is not the same for everyone within the boundaries of the empire.
Chasing A Dying Empire 