We live in a society where an entire race of people is expected to be perfect because of the color of their skin. A chilling example of this can be found in Emmett Till’s story: Emmett was a fourteen-year-old African American boy who in 1955 took a trip to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi. One day he went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. People disagree on what happened while he was there (some say he whistled at Bryant’s wife, a white woman, while others say he said something like “hey baby”), but this seemingly small interaction resulted in Emmett’s death.
Some nights later, Joe Bryant and J. W. Milam kidnapped Emmett from his bed. They violently beat and mutilated him, then shot him and sunk his body in the Tallahatchie River. Both men openly admitted to killing Emmet during an interview with Look magazine. However, the all-white, all-male jury acquitted them, and they were never punished for the murder.
As I said before, I didn’t know about Emmett Till until I was 16, and his story has stayed with me ever since. I could not–and still can’t–imagine anything a child might do that could warrant death, much less a death as gruesome and tragic as Emmett’s. During the summer of 2012, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to visit the remains of Bryant’s Grocery, a now decrepit building. The roof and chunks of the walls have collapsed in, and it is overgrown with ivy and weeds. It seemed at the time, to me, a fitting end for such a truly disgusting and abhorrent crime.
Note the use of the word ‘end.’ Because at sixteen, I didn’t realize what I know now: that while the store has fallen to shambles, echoes of Emmett’s story continue to reverberate throughout the country, most recently with the death of Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio.
Tamir was in a city park, sitting on a swing and playing with a fake gun, pointing it at people walking by. Someone called the police about it; twice during the call he said the pistol was probably fake, and near the end of the call said that he was probably a juvenile. However, this information was not relayed to the two officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, who responded. Within two seconds of arriving at the scene, without even putting the car in park, Loehmann fired two shots at Tamir, hitting him once in the torso. No one administered any first aid to Tamir, and he died the next day. On Monday, Dec. 28, the Grand Jury in charge of the case announced that they would not be charged for their actions.
And here’s the kicker: it turns out that what Tamir had was an Airsoft replica gun. He was only 12.
Of course, there are differences in Emmett and Tamir’s stories, but the basic outlines are chillingly similar: young black men killed by white men for a behavior that was deemed unacceptable. It is absolutely shameful that this continues to happen, even over sixty years after Emmett’s death. We should have learned by now.
It would be quite simple, and to be frank, much more comfortable, to brush off Tamir’s death as a natural consequence of his behavior. One should not point weapons at people in public, even if that weapon happens to be fake. Tamir should not have done that. But he also should not have had to die for that silly mistake.
As one man wrote on a note left at the site of Tamir’s death, we live in a society where an entire race of people is expected to be perfect because of the color of their skin. Let’s pause for a second. I have a fourteen-year-old sister, who is white like me. With confidence I can say that should she one day sit on a swing in a public park and point a fake gun at people, no matter how realistic the gun looked, she would not end up like Tamir.
Nor would my white brother, who is 18 years old. Should the police be called, I doubt they would accelerate off the road into the grass only feet away from him and shoot him at close range before the vehicle had even stopped moving. I know they would give him a chance to put the weapon down before any shots were fired.
They would not kill him. He would not die like Emmett died, or like Tamir died. Again: we live in a society where an entire race of people is expected to be perfect because of the color of their skin. When will it end?
