Alton Sterling: Black lives still don’t matter

Another cold blooded murder. Another Black man shot in the back at the hands of trigger happy white police officer. Another brick in the wall that screams to Black America: you’ll always be inferior to us, and we have the ultimate power to take your life.

If these words seem strong then spare a thought for the family of Alton Sterling, whose son no doubt has witnessed on video his father being executed for a minor altercation of illegally selling CD’s on the street. And of course this state brutality is not in recent isolation; think Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, and Kajieme Powell, all died at the hands of those who are paid to protect.

No doubt the State will aggressively defend itself by highlighting that Sterling had a gun in pocket, and that he had a criminal record going back nearly 20 years. But it must not hide the fact of what people saw on the video, which was nothing more than an execution.

It is utterly alarming that the brilliant movement that is Blacklivesmatter, is forced to have its key focus on matters of life and death, as if to say, ‘it’s important that we are not murdered by the State’, rather than Black lives matter in regards to equality of opportunity.

The shocking sadness about all of this is the most uncomfortable truth these executions probably accounted for hundreds of Black lives at the hands of the police. The difference now is that a tiny handful have been filmed so we can see with our own eyes what has occurred.

Without film evidence the way Alton Sterling was murdered would I guess have a completely different narrative to what we saw, in spite of eye witnesses. One similar to the narrative of Mark Duggan, when the offending officer swore on a stack of bible, that he saw Duggan take the gun point it at him which forced him to unload his firearm fearing for his life.

Black America is completely outraged by this latest tragedy, it’s just a shame white America isn’t equally outraged. Then we might see that ‘Blacklivesmatter’ too.

Simon Woolley