This is something I explained recently in a "white privilege" conversation; that it's even deeper in our national mentality on race, and even more poisonous. Even when you're "one of the good ones," you have to spend every day justifying your right to even be alive.The more horrific part, in my opinion, is that we—people of color—have been exposed to this "thugs deserve to die" narrative so frequently that some of us seem to have embraced it ourselves.
I didn't even think about how the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown message was buying into this mentality. As if me wearing sports wear and showing tattoos should automatically mark me out as worthless in the first place.
Digging out the corruption by the roots...it seems like they really do just spread everywhere, ne?