When I was a child, I thought America was a place of racial harmony. At my school in Birmingham, (England, not Alabama) there was the average amount of racism, but on American TV shows, the U.S. seemed to my 8-year-old-eyes like a post-racial utopia: cops were always one-white, one-black; judges were invariably black women; silver-haired white guys adopted sassy black kids.

Of course, my 8-year-old self knew nothing.

I’ve read a lot in the last few years about America’s problem with racism, but it’s one thing to read about it, and another to watch it, in stark, unblinking YouTube—a 12-year old executed by police who drive straight up to him and shoot him dead, then fail to administer first aid, for example. And a few shocking cases do not constitute data, but the shocking videos back up what the hard numbers tell us: the US police & criminal justice system monster black communities.

There seem to be a lot of these stories in the news at the moment. I can’t see how America can ignore them. Maybe things will start to change.

The Intellectual Condescension of White Liberals on PeaceBang blog: interesting piece by a (white) American minister about her white friends’ inability to assimilate these recent terrible reports of white-police-on-black violence.

Tamir Rice: police release video of 12-year-old’s fatal shooting – video via The Guardian/Reuters: video of a 12-year-old (black) kid being executed by two (white) Cleveland police officers. Police rationalisation: he had a gun. Sane reply: so did you, and you just drove up and shot him dead without giving him a chance to drop the gun, in a state where open-carry of firearms is perfectly legal, and he’s fucking twelve years old and you left him lying there, bleeding to death until until FBI turned up many minutes later.

White Cops File Suit, Claim They Are Punished Too Much For Shooting People: Clearly Cleveland police department is good at a few things. Victim-blaming and playing-the-victim being chief amongst them.