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The shooting death of Justine Damond, an Australian bride-to-be, by Mohamed Noor, a Somali-American police officer, has turned the entire police brutality debate topsy-turvy and with good reason.

Since Black Lives Matter brought the issue of police violence to the national stage, cases that typically headline the news have involved black victims and white police officersand the publics response to such cases has become expected: Officer kills unarmed black citizen; short-lived to no media attention is paid; protests erupt in support of or against police; punishment is light, if at all. Wash, rinse, repeat.

This most recent case in Minneapolis involving a white civilian and a black cop has, however, garnered quite a different reaction. Damonds death has dominated network morning shows and evening newscasts all week, the same photo of the beautiful, smiling blonde spread across the screen. Headlines focused on her status as a bride-to-be and a yoga teacher. We heard about her fiancs outrage and her familys distress. Newspapers continue to break stories of every new detail, like a mystery that will only end when Noor is punished.

But that isnt the same as social media outcry and activism, which, to be honest, are usually sparked when mainstream media ignores an injustice. For CNN, Doug Criss writes, A vigil was held for Ruszczyk [Damond], but there werent widespread protest marches, like the ones Black Lives Matter held last year after Philando Castiles shooting death at the hands of an officer in nearby Falcon Heights. (After a vigil outside her home on Thursday, hundreds marched to a nearby park in her remembrance.)

While people have every right to be outraged at what seems like a very questionable reason (Noor says he was startled by a loud noise) to shoot an unarmed human, does Damonds shooting death garner a widespread movement? Is there a larger pattern of injustice for the masses to galvanize over?

Untrained, trigger-happy police officers, perhaps. But this is not on par with why movements like Black Lives Matter were created. BLM gets mentioned at times like this because it is the most prominent group in America to address police brutality, so some might think it makes sense to call on the movement to be at the frontlines of the battle for Justice for Justine.

But that expectation shows how little people understand about the movement for black lives. It also shows the hypocrisy, and long-standing history, of expecting black people to do the uncomfortable work that white people dont want to do.

Black Lives Matter was never established to advocate on behalf of white people, nor has it ever had support from the general white public. Though the movement was initiated to address police brutality, from its advent BLM made it clear that its goal was to raise awareness about police brutality and its impact on the black community. Not advocate for all individuals impacted by police violence.

Per the movements website:

#BlackLivesMatter was created in 2012 after Trayvon Martins murderer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted for his crime, and dead 17-year old Trayvon was posthumously placed on trial for his own murder. Rooted in the experiences of Black people in this country who actively resist our dehumanization, #BlackLivesMatter is a call to action and a response to the virulent anti-Black racism that permeates our society. Black Lives Matter is a unique contribution that goes beyond extrajudicial killings of Black people by police and vigilantes.

The racial specificity with which Black Lives Matter approached the issue of police violence is completely sensible, especially when we consider the fact that black people are 2.5 times more likely to die at the hands of police than white people. Not to mention, since 2005, only 35 percent of officers were convicted for fatal on-duty shootings, according to a study by longtime researcher Philip Stinson. A movement that specifically addresses the disproportionate rate at which black people are killed by police is not only justified, but necessary.

The black community has used the Black Lives Matter platform to bring awareness to its causes, organize marches, advocate for police reform, and collect donations for victims. Among many other initiatives, the movement launched Campaign Zero, a project that lists proposals for police reform, detailing ways to reduce racial bias and mandating that officers undergo better training and always wear body cams so that they are held accountable for their interactions with black Americans. The Say Her Name Campaign specifically shed light on the violence endured by black women at the hands of police, which often goes unreported in the media. Under the banner of #BLM, students at the University of California pressured the school to pull out from its $30 million prison investment. The movement has even had a huge impact on politics, prompting 2016 Democratic nominees like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton to actually address gun control and the need for prison reform as a part of their national campaigns.

Insisting Black Lives Matter owes Damondits advocacy is re-centering the narrative to say that police brutality is a problem for black people to fix, and that violence is only worth getting worked up about if a pretty white woman is victimized. If your rebuttal to this is Well, dont #AllLivesMatter? then I hope to see you in the streets the next time a pregnant black woman like Charleena Lyles gets shot in front of her children.

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Black Lives Matter shouldn't be expected to protest bride-to-be's shooting death - The Daily Dot

The Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality has inspired so much racial hatred that white people in America should fear for their lives, a correspondent for the National Rifle Associations streaming network saidWednesday.

In a segment produced for the American gun lobbying organizations online channel, conservativehost Grant Stinchfieldsaid race relations are deeply strained in the country after Barack Obamas presidency.

But nowhere is near as bad as it is in South Africa where white families are being tortured and killed almost every day in racist violence. It is a warning for the United States that you will never hear from the mainstream media in this country, he added.

He then turned the segment over tofrontline correspondent Chuck Holton, a freelance cameraman for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Violence in South Africa is kind of a warning for what could happen in the United States if we continue to let this get out of control, to go down this path of this racial tension, Holton said. This racial hatred that is being forced on the American culture by the Black Lives Matter crowd.

Hate crimes in South Africa have long been an issue, but its primarilyrefugees, immigrants, and the LGBTQ communitythat suffer. In March, the country launched a hate crime unit to combatgrowing violence against Nigerians. Murderhas gone upandgender violencecontinues to claim lives.A 2015 studyby the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation showed that the majority of people in South Africa agree with a united nation making up all the different groups in the country, but concluded that structural legacies of apartheid continue to reinforce old patterns of socialisation and prejudice.

The NRA neglected to include basic hate crime information about the country in their segment.

In America, the Black Lives Matter movement was created as a response to the repeated cases of police officers violentlytargeting black people amid the release of documented evidence of racial bias in police precincts across the nation. And as the groups name suggests, the organizations primary goal is to help others understand that black peoples lives are also important.

But the NRA doesnt care.

White victimhood is aright-wing tacticthat inverts the lefts narratives of minority discrimination and neocolonialism. This tactic denies that there is such a thing as white privilege, and attempts to camouflage white domination, wroteCharles Villet, a professor at Monash South Africa University in Johannesburg who studies post-Apartheid white identity politics, for The Conversation.

This ideology of white victimhood in South Africa is mirrored in far-right circles and by extremists, including in the manifestos of mass murderers Anders Breivik and Dylann Roof.

The NRA, meanwhile, has continued to spread misinformation and hyperbole. Last month, a minute-long ad soaked in fear and crocodile tears went viral.

Theyuse their media to assassinatereal news, The BlazesDana Loeschsaid in the ad. They use their schools to teach children that their president is another Hitler. They use their movie stars and singers and comedy shows and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again.

And at a demonstration Saturday bringing attention to the unjustified death of Philando Castile ablack elementary school teacherkilled by police the NRAinstead of defending the rightful gun owner lashed outon social media against the protesters.

AsSalon points out, just this year the NRA has made ads claiming the Manchester terrorist attacks happened because of gender bending and that Americans need to buy their guns before all the rapists are released in California.

Forall their mocking of it, the trembling, paranoid NRA could really use a safe space right now.

More:
The Easily Scared NRA Blames Black Lives Matter For 'Racial Hatred' - HuffPost

... Sanaa Lathan and Stephan James; Lathan and Stephen Moyer; Helen Hunt; DeWanda Wise; and Tristan Mack Wilds in Shots Fired. Composite: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

A year and three weeks ago in the Saint Paul suburb of Falcon Heights, Minnesota, a 32-year-old man by the name of Philando Castile was shot and killed by a police officer after his car was pulled over. The footage of the shootings immediate aftermath, live-streamed on Facebook by Castiles horrified girlfriend who had been travelling with him, ensured media coverage, but by this point the scenario was tragically familiar. Castile was one of 258 black men killed by police officers in the US in 2016.

That same 6 July, near Kannapolis, North Carolina, the cast and crew of a new TV show, Shots Fired, were preparing to film the pivotal scene in their 10-part drama about race and justice. This was the scene in which black police officer, Deputy Joshua Beck, shoots dead a white teenager at a traffic stop. If you remember, I think the day before Philando was shot, there was another shooting [of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge], recalls Tristan Mack Wilds, who plays Beck. So you know, Im coming on the set and Im breathing heavily and watching [Castiles] girlfriend on Facebook, like, as its going on, and its just hitting me like: Yo, this is ridiculous. When is this going to end? I remember walking into my trailer and the first thing I see is my characters police uniform and everything hit me like a tidal wave. Just hit me. I was overcome with just emotion.

That feeling, of loyalties colliding and prejudices challenged, will be familiar, to some extent, to any viewer of Shots Fired, now mid-season on Fox. Even given the charged nature of its subject matter, this is an exceptionally intense television show. Created and exec-produced by husband-and-wife team Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reggie Rock Bythewood, it tells the story of Gate Station, a small US city a city like Ferguson or Charlotte, or Saint Paul where centuries -long community tensions are brought to a head by the police-involved killings of two teenage boys, one black and one white. Sanaa Lathan and Stephan James star as an ex-cop-turned-expert investigator and a lawyer teamed by the Department of Justice to investigate. They are, by turns, aided and frustrated by the local political establishment, played by an impressive ensemble cast including Helen Hunt as the state governor and Richard Dreyfuss as a local real estate mogul.

Since August 2014, when protests in Ferguson, Missouri made Black Lives Matter international news, television has tried to depict the movement, with varying degrees of sensitivity and success. The last series of Scandal improved on reality with spoilers ahead a frankly fantastical ending in which the racist officer was prosecuted and anti-corruption legislation was introduced. The Good Wife wasnt so much criticised as pitied for a cringingly tone-deaf episode in which two wealthy white characters debated racial injustice in a hotel kitchen, surrounded by mostly black staff who later broke into applause. Law & Order characteristically used it as another ripped from the headlines plot. Shots Fired is palpably something different.

It was extremely emotional for all of us, recalls Wilds who, prior to being cast as Adeles love interest in her Hello video, was best known in the UK as Michael the soft-spoken corner boy from The Wire. On other sets, you can go home, decompress, watch cartoons or whatever, to just take your mind off it. The greatest and the worst part with this was you turn on your television, you open your phone up and you see another kid shot. You see another police officer getting off; you see another incident and another incident and another incident, damn near every day.

Lathan who plays investigator Ashe Akino, describes a similar on-set experience: After Philando got killed, we came in the next day and our first AD [assistant director] was in tears. We did kind of a prayer circle because it was just too close to home. She says it was coming to understand acting as a kind of activism that kept the cast going. We want to entertain people, and it is very entertaining, but we also want to inspire people to address the issue.

Yet cop dramas and police procedurals are not traditionally the locus of fiery, thought-provoking challenges to the status quo. In fact, several studies suggest that genre viewers are more likely to have positive attitudes towards the police, as well as supporting punitive policies such as capital punishment. And since the majority of people have little personal contact with the criminal justice system in their daily lives, these dramas can become a key source of public information. Kathleen Donovan, a political science professor at St John Fisher College, New York and researcher in this field, perceives an anti-civil liberties message in most cop shows. [On TV] the typical criminal is a bad person who very consciously and deliberately decides to commit crime, she says. The typical cop is married to the job and though he or she may need to break a few rules from time to time, the ends justify the means because they are the good guys.

The mechanism for delivering this message is not so blatant as the straightforward racial stereotyping of young black men a recent study of Law & Order found that the show actually over-represents whites and females as both victims and perpetrators but this may also be a part of the problem. In an effort to be unbiased and post-racial, there is a tendency to focus on the crime and the process of solving it, with little consideration of the social factors involved, says Alex Vitale, author of forthcoming book The End of Policing. In fact, the history of crime, police, courts and prisons is a history of race relations. By glossing over that history, [police dramas] perpetuate the illusion that racism is not at the centre of American social relations.

So while the real-world racial bias of the criminal justice system is well documented (black Americans are no more likely than white Americans to use or sell drugs, but are arrested at twice the rate, to give one example), the criminal justice system, as seen on television, is devoid of all such context. No doubt the reasons why juries nearly always acquit in cases of police-involved shootings are complex, but it seems likely that the TV-promoted image of the always-benevolent copper might have something to do with it.

What would a radical, change-promoting police procedural look like? Probably a lot like Shots Fired, which not only features a range of prominent non-white characters but crucially also challenges the liberal erasure of race, gender and class by fully exploring how these characters backgrounds impact on their experience. So, Lathans Ashe Akino is not a law-enforcement agent who just happens to be a black women; shes a law-enforcement agent whose experience of systemic discrimination has forced her to develop a finesse in dealing with people in positions of power that her male, Ivy League-educated partner lacks.

I love that whole paradigm shift with the partners, says Lathan. You usually see two men, and with this being a woman and a man and the woman being the older one, its new. She the veteran and hes the green one. In many ways, Akino is the closest Shots Fired gets to that old TV staple, the maverick cop. Shes got the troubled home life, the low-level drinking problem and the passion for justice, but she cant afford to cut corners in quite the same way that white men such as The Wires McNulty or The Shields Vic Mackey do. Its a subtle subversion which reminds us of the ways in which privilege works, both in criminal justice and TV representation.

Many of Shots Fireds viewers will need no reminding, however, as Wilds points out. I think theres enough going on in our communities where no matter how many cop shows we see, its not gonna change the way that we feel just walking outside, he says. He was raised in a pretty poor neighbourhood in New York, at the height of the stop-and-frisk era. So, Ive definitely had my own run-ins with police officers. It had me grow up with the mindset of not necessarily NWA the police, but very, very close to it, yknow?

As well as literally stepping into a policemans shoes to play Officer Beck, Wildss research involved spending time with real officers, observing their work and hearing their points of view. Did it make him feel more sympathetic? I dont want to say sympathetic. I think its more of just an understanding thing. I dont condone anything that these police officers are doing out here; its ugly, its disgusting, but I come from a place now of understanding their training and understanding a lot of police officers mindsets.

Its this same kind of understanding-not-sympathy that Shots Fired affords all its viewers. Its also this exploration of several perspectives black, white, male, female, rich, poor, police, civilian that means it could never be simply Black Lives Matter: The Show. As much as I would want to say that it is, I cant, says Wilds. I am very much pro-Black Lives Matter, but this is a show thats for all of us, not just one race, not just one person. This is for us all to look at each other and understand that were all human in this.

Shots Fired continues 23 July, 9pm, Fox

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Shots Fired: is this Black Lives Matter, the TV show? - The Guardian

NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

CNN Brings Black Lives Matter Into OJ Simpson Verdict NewsBusters (press release) (blog) On CNN Tonight Thursday, a panel discussion on O.J. Simpson's parole verdict earlier that day veered into politics, after one guest related the treatment of Simpson to Black Lives Matter. CNN legal analyst Areva Martin compared the reactions to ...

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CNN Brings Black Lives Matter Into OJ Simpson Verdict - NewsBusters (press release) (blog)

Two days after losing the fight to keep a Confederate monument in front of a Tampa courthouse, a group advocating to preserve the status quo is lashing out at Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn and Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman.

On Wednesday, Hillsborough Commissioners voted 4-2 to remove the statue, called Memoria In Aeterna, and send it to the Brandon Family Cemetery. That decision came four weeks after the board originally voted 4-3 to keep the statue in front of the Hillsborough County Courthouse, where it stood for over a century.

Revising her original vote, Murman said it was because South Tampa attorney Tom Scarritt came forward with a campaign to privately raise funds to move the statue. There would no longer be any financial obligation to the county, which was her major concern all along.

Idont see how anybody could not support this, Murman said Wednesday.

Among the groups speaking Wednesday at the county commission meeting in support of moving the statuewere members of the Broward County chapter of Black Lives Matter,formed two years ago to fight againstviolence and systemic racismtoward blacks.

Noting that, and the fact that Buckhorn had jokedthat he could sleep well at night knowing he had upset former KKK Imperial WizardDavid Duke by wanting the monument moved,Save Southern Heritage is now attempting to link the two groups in finding fault with both the mayor and Murman.

Buckhorns crack about Duke was an inventive talking point noted Doug Guetzloe, a spokesperson for Save Southern Heritage Florida. But itslaughable to think that its OK to disrespect American veterans just because David Duke does.

Guetzloe said Buckhorns comment regarding Duke was justproviding cover for his decision to support Black Lives Matters and their blatant disrespect of American Veterans.

That raises an interesting contrast, added Save Southern Heritages David McCallister. If Buckhorn sides against Duke and with Black Lives Matter, then Commissioner Murmans flip-flopping puts her right into bed with Black Lives Matter, too.

Save Southern Heritage also made mention in their statement about the relatively slow start for the GoFundMe account being run by Scarritt to raise the private funds to move the statue.

As of 4 p.m. Friday afternoon, the fund has raised just $1,715, with $1,000 of that money coming from Scarritt.

Requests for comment from Buckhorn and Murman were not immediately returned.

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Bob Buckhorn 'sides' with Black Lives Matter in monument removal, says Confederate group - SaintPetersBlog (blog)