Intimations: Six Essays

by Zadie Smith

Why are you bothering me with this bullshit? The bullshit in this case being a man explaining he couldn’t breathe under the pressure of the officer’s knee on his neck. A man called George. He was alerting the officer to the fact that he was about to die. You’d have to hate a man a lot to kneel on his neck till he dies in plain view of a crowd and a camera, knowing the consequences this would likely have upon your own life. (Or you’d have to be pretty certain of immunity from the herd – not an unsafe bet for a white police officer, historically, in America.) But this was something darker – deadlier. It was the virus, in its most lethal manifestation. The immediate infection comes the moment the store in question calls the cops and the voice down the line asks after the race of this master criminal who has just tried to use a phoney twenty-dollar bill with the ink still wet upon it. To have any real chance of catching the virus from the answer ‘white’, you’d have to add a qualifier like ‘homeless’ or ‘on meth’. The lack of capital would have to be strikingly evident – visible. But the answer ‘black’ immediately carries a heavy load, and a number of potentially violent actions – that would have been unlikely otherwise – suddenly become psychologically possible. You don’t just lecture or book this type of body or take it down to the station. It would have no respect for you if you did that – after all, it is more than used to rough treatment. Nor can it really be taken serious...