Tyre Nichols, "black on black" violence, and the apartheid link

“The police who killed Tyre Nichols were black. But they might still have been driven by racism” says a CNN headline to an opinion piece penned by a one Van Jones. This is in response to the viral video of the murder of a black man, Tyre Nichols, by five black policemen. Some in the mainstream media, including some “experts”, are being disingenuous. They utilise a weak, incomplete and opportunistic understanding of racism.

In my book, Apartheid Studies: A Manifesto, I demonstrate that black police killing black people is the design, not an accident. The reason it happens is because of what I call the “Rate of Oppression” — and racism is only a subset of it. In fact, the first page in my book shows the picture on the right — of apartheid police trainees in 1978 in Hammanskraal, South Africa.

We need a better, deeper, thorough, more forensic and more inductive understanding of how the oppressed live with harm. Clichés and slogans are not just lazy. They are inherently damaging.