a moment of clarity.

words. 

"Late Tuesday, news broke that yet another unarmed American, a black man named Walter Scott, was killed by a white police officer. As with Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and Rodney King nearly 25 years ago, the brutality was captured on video for the world to see. The New York Times put the damning evidence at the very top of its homepage and it quickly spread throughout social media networks provoking outrage, disgust, horror, grief. These reactions have come most vocally from black Americans. The silence from white activists, elected officials, public figures, and citizens has been deafening.

If you're white and have made it to this paragraph you might be thinking, or headed to the comments to write, "not all white people…" To be sure, there are white Americans active in efforts toward police reform. That population is, however, nowhere near the critical mass needed for change. Take for example New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. He made some unprecedented comments expressing "pain and frustration" after a grand jury failed to indict the NYPD officer who choked Eric Garner to death on film. He was quickly pressured to walk back that sentiment and, without the support he needed, did exactly that.

The bottom line: The majority of white Americans believe the nation's police are doing a good job despite that work often ending in the deaths of unarmed black people.

...When we can't complete a news cycle without learning another unarmed black person has been killed by police, one wonders: Where are the reasonable white Americans? Where's the religious right, those patriots and lovers of life and liberty? Even more, where are those good white cops, and what do they have to say about the one who executed Scott and then had the clarity of mind to possibly plant a weapon near him and falsify a police report?

 ...That brings us back to an unarmed Scott, stopped for a busted tail light in a state where you're only required to have one, struck five times from behind as he ran away from a man who'd later appeared to plant evidence on his dead body and lie about administering CPR to him. And, of course, Scott brings us back to Miriam Carey, Aiyana Stanley Jones, Ezell Ford, John Crawford, and so many others. How many more must die, how close together, and under what circumstances before the most empowered Americans feel compelled to advance, legislate and execute police reform? Or is this the system they want?"

GAWKER: White America's Silence on Police Brutality Is Consent