Following the recent verdict in which Michael Dunn was found not guilty of murder in the killing of Jordan Davis, a number of powerful essays were written lamenting yet another example of the criminal system devaluing the lives of African American youth. It is inconceivable that if a Black man had fired seven shots into a van full of white teenagers, a jury would have come to a similar verdict. One of the students in my new class, Race and Racism: Theory and Experience, posted a link to an essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who writes for the Atlantic. I encourage you to read it — it is short, yet powerful in its case.

In his essay, Coates writes,

Spare us the invocations of “black-on-black crime.” I will not respect the lie. I would rather be thought insane. The most mendacious phrase in the American language is “black-on-black crime,” which is uttered as though the same hands that drew red lines around the ghettoes of Chicago are not the same hands that drew red lines around the life of Jordan Davis, as though black people authored North Lawndale and policy does not exist.

This sentiment highlights the problem with liberal thinking about issues of race and racism, which refuses to consider the structural nature of racism. Instead, the focus of liberal thinking (and liberalism more generally) is that the problem can be explained by focusing on racist individuals, and ignores the ways in which we are all complicit in the perpetuation of racist ideologies and inequalities.