Tag Archives: police brutality

Pratchett’s Solution to Police Violence

Wednesday That Breonna Taylor’s family is receiving a $12 million settlement and the promise of police reform following her wrongful shooting by Louisville police is in part a testimony to Black Lives Matters protests and other instances of public pressure. Without them, we might not even know her name. With that in mind, I return […]

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Battling Our Inner Darkness

Terry Pratchett’s “Thud!” deals with violence–both the violence we are witnessing around us and the violent thoughts these call up within ourselves. It helps explain police brutality.

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From God’s Breath to “I Can’t Breathe”

Wednesday This past Juneteenth I was flipping through channels and caught MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell quoting James Weldon Johnson’s “Creation.” It was a moving application of poetry to this important moment in time. Mitchell was referring to George Floyd’s plaintive cry “I can’t breathe” before he was suffocated by Minneapolis police. Johnson’s poem, she said, reminds […]

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Cops’ Invisible Disciplinary Records

There’s a thrill in acting with impunity. Bad cops know this and so does H.G. Wells’s invisible man.

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Sartre Captures White Privilege

Sartre’s “Respectful Prostitute” captures many of the race dynamics of our current situation.

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In Aeneid, It’s the Wives Who Riot

The riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death recall for me the wives rioting in the Aeneid–another neglected and long-suffering group who are fed up.

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When the Police Target Black Women

If 2014 saw police victimization of black men, 2015 revealed some police victimization of black women. Alice Walker’s “Color Purple” warned us about this decades ago.

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Protesting Baltimore’s Racial Divide

The racial divide we are currently seeing in Baltimore was noted by Countee Cullen in 1925.

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