What Happened Before The Video

It is a familiar trolling question following the release of video that show police beating, yelling at, manhandling, stomping, tasering, choking and, of course, shooting Black men and women:

“What happened before the video?” someone invariably asks, as if there is something that justifies the brutality we witness with every new video.

The question is posed as a faux concern and purposeful deflection to the horror of the latest video of police brutality.

The faux concern people are equivalent to those who say things like “I still need to think about how I am going to vote for president” when they and we know they are again voting for Trump.

And the purposeful deflection people are those people who believe that cops murdering and abusing people is always justified and a “reason just needs to be found.“

The question is a loaded question that leads to arguments, unfriending and unfollowing, and debates on the purpose of police, aka slave-hunters, and how they protect and enforce white supremacy by controlling Black bodies everywhere, but particularly Black bodies in white spaces.

While there are instances where “the whole video is released” either by family, bystanders, or police, the preceding video can rarely justify the familiar outcomes we see every day.