Tennis champion Serena Williams has spoken out on the death of Christian Taylor, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by a police officer…This is the new form of ‘speaking out’ which involves reporters getting wind of Tweets you’ve made and then printing them, of course.
But still, another young black man minding his own business has been brutally taken from…
Oh. Wait.
… after he allegedly drove an SUV through the doors of a car dealership.Ah. And this prompts a Tweet from Williams why, exactly?
Writing on Twitter, Williams, who won the Women's Singles at Wimbledon earlier this year, said: "Really? Are we all sleeping and this is one gigantic bad nightmare? #ChristianTaylor how many hashtags now?" , referring to the Twitter hashtags that have regularly sprung up following the deaths of people like Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Sandra Bland at the hands of police.All of whom met their demise when they refused to obey police instructions (except Bland, who killed herself) or attacked police.
Why is this so hard to understand, even for sportswomen?
CCTV footage from the car dealership shows a man, who resembles Taylor, wandering around the dealership's car park. At one point in the video, he climbs on top of a car and begins stamping on the windscreen. He then allegedly drove his Jeep through the front window of the showroom.
When police arrived, they told him to surrender. According to Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson, the officers went inside the showroom to arrest him.
A confrontation followed, the details of which are still unclear, and Taylor, who was unarmed, was shot and killed by trainee officer Brad Miller.
Speaking to local news channel KTVT, Taylor's father Adrian said that what his son had done was wrong, but said he didn't deserve to be killed for it.And if he’d surrendered and gone quietly, he wouldn’t have been.
He said: "You're a police officer, you're trained to take down men with your hands. You have your Tasers, you have your clubs, whatever there is. Unarmed, a 19-year-old, and you shoot to kill?"*yawns* Well, at least he didn’t request they only shot him in an arm or a leg.
One down, so many, many, many more.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of race hustling groupthink dealing you get when the deck has the hearts, clubs and diamonds removed from it.
ReplyDeleteLike Serena Williams, Kayla Mueller was a female American citizen, who wanted to try and help the world become a better place. Kayla was abducted and repeatedly raped by some smelly, unhygienic, excuse for a human being. Kayla Mueller wan an innocent yet died in a most horrific way. Why isn't Serena Williams tweeting about that? Could it be that Kayla was not black and was tortured and killed by an 'ethnic' person? It just shows that fame and fortune does not always bring a sense of proportion to one's thinking.
ReplyDeletePenseivat
Tell Serena that if he had been a white dude behaving like that, he would still be dead.
ReplyDeleteI really don't know why they have to kill the, Surely just shooting them in the balls should be enough? And if nothing else it stops them propogating.
ReplyDelete"This is the kind of race hustling groupthink dealing you get when the deck has the hearts, clubs and diamonds removed from it."
ReplyDeleteAnd as we saw last week, it's quite a deadly attitude.
"Kayla Mueller wan an innocent yet died in a most horrific way. Why isn't Serena Williams tweeting about that?"
It's a mystery...
"I really don't know why they have to kill the, Surely just shooting them in the balls should be enough?"
They shoot to stop. Repeatedly.