On the heels of Derek Chauvin being found guilty in the murder of George Floyd, a video emerged of the shooting of 15-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant by Columbus, Ohio police. The killing sparked outrage not only in Columbus but around the nation as well. This indignation spilled over to social media, one of the most notable commentators on this latest interaction between a black person and police that ended in a Black Death was LeBron James. In a, unfortunately, since-deleted tweet James posted a picture of the officer , Nicholas Reardon, that did the shooting and captioned it “You’re next #ACCOUNTABILTY.”
This caused many in the more right-leaning sectors of both the sports and regular media to get their confederate flags in a bunch. They proceeded to attack Lebron, making the erroneous claim that he was threatening the officer, which is simply bullocks; anyone with a moderately functioning cerebral cortex could see that Lebron was not issuing a threat toward Ma’khia Bryant’s killer.
Lebron, in this instance, diverted from his usual lofty-sounding filibustering and made a definitive call for a race soldier to be punished. A black person ,but especially a black man who speaks truth to power is a major affront to many in the media but society as a whole, and because of that they went on the attack and did not relent, even now, when he did somewhat walked back his initial comments and took down the tweet ( something I wished he would not have done) falling back into his usual pattern.
Unintentionally, Lebron James has exposed how much anti-black sentiment pervades the populace. The very people that are going after him are actually defending that child being gunned down. Ma’Khia Bryant killed no one, yet mass killers and shooters such as Dylan Roof and Kyle Rittenhouse were managed to be taken into custody alive, and in the case of Roof, went to jail with a belly full of Burger King. People in law enforcement even donated money to Killer Kyle.
Lebron James was 100% right, at least for a few glorious hours.
It was nice while it lasted.
