My friends, please don’t pretend you can’t understand how we feel this way. And if you claim that slavery and Jim Crow and the sixties are ancient history, you know your words are lies before they leave your lips. How could that history be erased so quickly? How can all of that be got rid of overnight? How can it be washed, without great effort, from the mind of a white cop who confronts black folk? How can we deny the structures, systems, and social forces that shape how black folk are seen and treated?
