There was a little pushing and shoving, much wailing into cheap portable address systems, but nothing even approximated the incendiary rage unleashed in 1992 when four LAPD officers skipped free after the videotaped pummeling of Rodney King. However, we weren t bombarded with the sights and sounds of Diallo s murder on the evening news, again and again, in slow mo and still frame. No amateur film pulled us into that vestibule and made us die with him. Not as vocal or numerous, but still present, were those in the community who reacted to the verdict by insisting that those embattled public guardians did only what was necessary to protect themselves. They consider themselves realists, and their world is startlingly black and white.
Police shoot people.
Black people get shot. Every once in awhile someone gets capped so blatantly, done so wrong, sodomized so viciously, that it HAS to make the news. It's not right. It never is. But that s life.