Letter to the Editor – by Emmet Bondurant

Black men make up 6% percent of the U.S. population, but account for 40% of the unarmed men shot to death by police. 1 in 1,000 black men and boys can expect to die at the hands of police – a risk that’s about 2.5 times higher than White males.
Blacks make up 12% of the population, but they account for 26.4% of those killed by police.
Blacks make up 13.2% of the U.S. population, but 40% of America’s prison population.
Whites are more likely to use illicit drugs, but Blacks are three times more likely to go to prison for it.
White per capita income is $31,313; for Blacks, it is $18,406.
Black unemployment and poverty rates are consistently more than twice that of Whites.
Now, due entirely to our history of systemic, institutionalized racism, nearly 60% of COVID-19 deaths are Black.

At it’s heart, the United States is still very much a racist nation. White supremacy has been woven inextricably into our society’s very fabric, warp and woof; it always has been. There’s no other explanation for our utter and complete indifference in allowing the above to blithely continue largely unnoticed, or for how we now breathlessly clutch our pearls and pontificate about nonviolence while tacitly approving of our brutal hyper-militarized police response to our greatest ancestral fear; a slave revolt. After suffering generations of oppression, injustice, and brutality; such defensive, even retaliatory violence as we’ve seen this week may be construed as an inevitable expression of our collective karma.

Emmet Bondurant

Hayesville, NC