Those within the black Diaspora must pay close attention to the language employed to convey what the media continues to posit as tragedy. The articles that “cover” black murder by the solders of white supremacy commonly indicate whether the slain were “unarmed” and or “have not committed a crime.” What this language articulates is that what the media performatively pairs with outrage is not entirely censured. The employed language posits the shootings as a necessary precaution that yielded “unfortunate consequences” in the stories that make the news.

This notion is easily substantiated by the simple reality that the cops continue to shoot black men, because what action deemed outrageous or unusually cruel continually happens in the same way every time?

The answer is easy, any sin cast against the black collective, because it is this social reproduction that culminates the inaugural task of the white settlers: to make blacks into slaves and to cast the African in America as prisoners of a perpetual enslavement.

Moreover, the white media covers these stories to inform those of the majority of the drastic measures taken to maintain their majority and keeps them safe. So yes, this coverage is about awareness, but an awareness antithetical to what the surface suggests.

I also wish to state that this message of awareness is what President-elect Joe Biden alludes to when he calls for more police and states that more police equals to more safety. As long as the masses fail to rupture this inherently anti-black policing-blacks remain the national sacrifice.

We remain obliged to wake up to a sound of bullets amidst news of another black life lost and another black legacy abridged in fatal assault, and destined to fall asleep to the last breaths of our brethren choking on their own blood in a space and place where our murder remains cyclical. To say that this dynamic is unfair would be an understatement. This behavior, this pattern, this cycle is American. Thus, the pervasive effort to present America as on the path to restoration, underscores black death as necessary to maintaining the market economy that still claims black life as its most expendable and exploitable resource.