WASHINGTON — When it comes to injustice against the community, why does it take a video to be believed? That was the case with George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Christian Cooper.
A young man runs down a street pursued by vigilantes. The pursuit ends in his death at their hands.
A man confronts a woman willfully breaking a minor law. Upset with his audacity in questioning her, the woman issues a threat, saying she will call the police. Which she does. And with a voice breaking in manufactured fear tells them that he is threatening her, and to please, hurry to her rescue.
A man is apprehended by police for possibly committing a crime. He ends up face down on the ground, handcuffed, arms behind his back, his neck underneath an officer’s knee. For five minutes he pleads with the officer, saying that he can't breathe, that he can't move his neck. He says, "I'm through. I'm through," and then he is still.
Ahmaud Arbery, Christian Cooper and George Floyd. Three black men. Three videos. Two showing the fatal outcomes. One shows the weaponization that has led to similar results in the past, and all provoking outrage and demands that justice be served.
In the short term, this has begun to happen: Ahmaud Arbery’s killers are currently in jail, awaiting due process. Four of the officers involved with George Floyd have been fired, and Amy Cooper, the woman who called for police to remove an annoyance, has felt public shame and lost her job.
But imagine for a second that these videos didn’t exist; that the public didn’t bear witness to these events. What would the outcomes have been? If you're being honest, I think you know.
In the case of Ahmaud Arbery, we do. According to his mother, she was told that her son was a thief, shot and killed after being caught burglarizing a home. What would have been said about George Floyd? What would have been believed about Christian Cooper? More than likely, the worst.
So ask yourself: Why must it take a video? Why is word of one citizen given more value that another? For every one of these incidents that we see on video, there are many others that we don't. Many others that are denied justice because the imagined hysteria of an Amy Cooper is given more weight than a community’s hard-earned fears.
How can fairness exist in the absence of belief? It’s this absence that makes these videos necessary. And it’s this absence that means that, as the family of Philando Castile can attest, even with a video, justice is not guaranteed.