Huey P. Newton said, “I do not expect the white media to create positive Black male images.” A white woman strangled her three children to death, and yet the lone Black male juror who refused to acquit her is now being cast as the problem. She is given context, sympathy, illness, and complexity. He is given suspicion.
She committed the violence, but he becomes the villain for refusing to excuse it.
Here’s something Black folks have long understood, in the United States a Black man does not need to commit violence to be treated violently.