Police Killings of Black Men and Boys: Racist, Unnatural, and Evil

• In Event: "I Can't Breathe": Police Killings of Black Men and the Quest for Justice of Black Boys in School

Abstract

Police shootings of Black men and boys are an affront to the dignity of humanity because the act of killing a person causes a ripple effect of undue, unnatural, and unnecessary harm and suffering on entire communities (and an entire segment of the human race). I use this essay to argue that as Black boys and men are robbed of their life, police killings also harm communities by dispossessing its people of the opportunity to act fully within their human potential to self-determine rather than merely survive. Using police shootings in Chicago as examples, I take stock of the collective costs associated with police murders of Black boys and men by examining (a) how communities respond to police killings and (b) what people in these communities could otherwise be doing with their human intellect, creativity, and potential were the evils of police killings not so routine.
Black boys and men in the U.S. are a classified group that experiences aging and death-related indignities at higher rates than other classified persons in the U.S. Police shootings and killings of Black boys and men that contribute to this disparate occurrence are rightly called violent acts of racism. Patterns of shootings lay bare the fact. By framing police shootings and killings of Black boys and men as evil acts that diminish the dignity of humanity (Kateb, 2011; Rosen, 2012), I bring into focus the fact that a racist society is itself an evil society that harms all people within it, albeit to different degrees and magnitudes. Racism reaches the magnitude of evil when acts of human degradation and humiliation amplify the vulnerabilities that accompany natural suffering. Degradation reflects violence and discriminatory treatment that cause unnecessary (i.e. unnatural) pain and suffering, loss of physical well-being, or faculties, or early death that could be avoided through expanding access to extant social, policy, or medical interventions, or not being shot.
All people are subject to experience natural suffering and vulnerabilities as part of the human experience. For example, neither aging nor death threatens the dignity of personhood because these vulnerabilities are natural and universal aspects of the human experience. So are pain, grief, and the potential for loss of physical faculties (Kateb, 2011; Rosen, 2012). Aging and dying often lead to natural suffering and pain; however, these are not necessarily indignities. Indeed, there can be dignity in aging and dignity in dying, given a person’s substantive dignity needs are and have been recognized and upheld. Rather, aging- and death-related indignities are unnaturally painful and stem from experiences such as not having an opportunity to experience the innocence of childhood, grow into adulthood, age and die with grace, inadequate access to food, or premature death at the hands of other humans. I conclude by radically imagining what dignified aging and death might look like for Black men and boys in the U.S.

Author

• Decoteau J. Irby, University of Illinois at Chicago