Is One Justified To Kill Based On Unfounded Fear??? When Just Being Black Is Perceived As A Threat…

In regards to the murder of Jordan Neely on a NYC subway…

I could see if the man had an AR 15 gun or something, but this man was unarmed, of a slight frail build, and could have easily been held down without the deadly choke hold placed on him by someone (a commuter who was a former marine) playing the role of a heroic vigilante gone horribly wrong. And even if initially not sure about whether this man was armed or not, a potential threat or not, it was pretty obvious that he was suffering a mental health episode a minute or two into the crisis, and unarmed…

The former marine who compressed his neck until he suffocated to death, could have released the choke hold as soon as the poor man was down, and no longer ‘a threat…’ but no, for whatever reason he felt justified in continuing to use this potentially lethal force for several minutes (and as a former marine, should have known and/or predicted this outcome), which certainly did not fit the crime. What was the crime? You ask…

The crime was Neely yelling out that he didn’t care if he lived, died, or went to jail, and that he had no food and “was done”, after which he preceded to take off his jacket throwing it to the floor of the subway; where he as a homeless man, performed as a Michael Jackson impersonator, well known to many regular commuters, that was his crime…

I guess this cry for help was interpreted as a potentially violent move, provoking fear instead of compassion…

We have to do better in our society to change the fact that seeing ‘black,’ whether in a crisis or not, sparks fear first, then there’s a perceived threat, and immediate vilification, a loss of humanity, and then a decay of social consciousness occurs during the encounter, with the black disparaged person being demonized by the white privileged person looking through a implicitly biased lens, thus the blacks lives not seeming to matter comes into focus, hence the impetus for the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM)…

See the individual, see the person, see the humanity first, then you can breakdown and identify that person’s features, physical characteristics, and demographics while evaluating the situation as to determine whether a threat or not, giving everyone the same benefit of the doubt, equal opportunity judgement in ‘good samaritan’ or other vigilantism, policing, sentencing, etc., because his life was worth something…