the killing will continue

"institutional racism no longer exists in this country."

~ lots of white people

"guns are not the problem in this country."

~ibid.

"the scariest animals on the planet are white americans with guns."

~ me

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after nine black parishioners were shot dead by a white racist in an historic black church in charleston, south carolina, gop presidential hopefuls reacted:

"i don't know" if the self-proclaimed racist shooter was motivated by racism. ~ jeb bush

“i just think he was one of these whacked out kids. i don’t think it’s anything broader than that.” ~ lindsay graham

"this is the M.O. of this administration anytime there is a accident like this. you know, the president's clear. he doesn't like for americans to have guns." ~ rick perry

"this type of conduct is something that only our display of our own love and good faith that’s in our heart can change. laws can’t change this." ~ chris christie

from the pro-gun, christians-are-persecuted "news" channel, this:

“we’re urging people wait for the facts, don’t jump to conclusions, because there does seem to be a rising hostility against christians across this country because of our biblical views."

~ e.w. jackson, fox and friends

and from the paper by and for privileged white people...

"the system and philosophy of institutionalized racism identified by dr. king no longer exists."  ~ the wall street journal

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“our country has changed.”
~ chief supreme court justice john roberts in shelby county v. holder

one might be forgiven for thinking that roberts, in his cloistered, privileged, lily-white world has no earthly idea what he's talking about.

he'll certainly have a hard time convincing the countless families of african americans killed by police every year.

interesting fact: no one knows how many people are killed by police in america every year. think about that for awhile. being killed by police is a pretty specific cause of death. and, being public servants and all, cops are required to write reports on just about everything they do.

but somehow, at a time when the NSA digitally records everything americans do 'round the clock...we don't know how many people are killed by cops in a given year, "...because of the way agencies count and report data." 
what we do know, however, is that black folks are "about four times as likely to die in custody or while being arrested than whites." and we know this: 

"KilledByPolice.net, a simple website that records mainstream media accounts of shootings as they occur, assembles them in a barebones database.

"The website started counting police shootings in 2013, and has a complete list for 2014. There’s a good chance that the website has missed some deaths, but for our purposes it’s better that the totals are too low than too high.

"KilledByPolice also notes when a news story includes information about gender and race of a victim. Not all news stories have that information, so again, the actual number of black victims is probably higher.

"But based on a count of news stories collected at KilledByPolice, there were at least 238 deaths of black Americans by police in 2014."

***********

to sum up, lots of people being killed in america, disproportionately more black folks than white. lots of them being killed by cops, which sounds lot like institutional racism.

but according to the cream of the conservative white people crop, we shouldn't jump to conclusions because we're not sure any of this stuff is actually happening.

in the meantime, the killing will continue.