An excerpt from the Huffington Post -
Killing Him While He’s Dead, A Eulogy For Stephon Clark
By Imam Omar Suleiman
The victim is somehow always made out to be the aggressor. Because if you cast enough aspersions on his character, create enough doubt about the circumstances of his murder and maintain an omnipresence of criminal identity, then maybe Stephon was asking for it. Maybe he’s not worth fighting for.
Many will, in fact, say that, though he didn’t deserve to be shot at 20 times, we also shouldn’t feel too bad.
Because if you distort his reputation enough, then you can discredit his status as a victim, and disregard his status as a human being.
The same media that humanizes domestic white terrorists like Dylann Roof and Mark Anthony Conditt deliberately vilifies black victims like Alton and Stephon.
And I, for one, don’t think it’s unreasonable to demand that black victims be treated with at least the same amount of dignity as white terrorists.
It’s not Stephon’s record or reputation that needs to be brought into question, it’s the way we police in this country that needs to be on trial.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/opinion-suleiman-stephon-clark_us_5abf90f1e4b055e50acdf47c
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