One death is a death too many. Too many of us 1 have died without cause, since first we came to work for this country in the post-war years, in the custody of the police, the prison system and the special hospitals. Or if cause there be, common to all three, it is the racist bias that has been woven into, and become an inextricable part of, the culture and administration of these 'services'. Black vagrants are even more readily than their white counterparts the sport and playthings of macho white policemen. Young blacks are frequently stopped and questioned on the basis of no more than a generalised suspicion that if they are black and young and on the streets they can be up to no good.
Violence is the only language they understand, and it is time they knew who was boss.
The contempt for blacks on the streets is carried into the contempt for blacks in their homes, for black family life. The black man's home is not his castle, even less the black woman's hers. There is nothing inviolable about the black family. The proof is in the numbers. The system is justified, it closes in on itself, it brooks no interference from outside - the indifference to black life becomes a fact of prison life.