Laquan McDonald: senseless killing continues in video after video

Everything about watching the Laquan McDonald video has messed with my brain. Everything.

The muted sound, making the sirens and blaring horns sound strangely distant, as if underwater, or in some horrible dream.

The pending dread of knowing that this was a snuff video, which was going to end with the death of yet another young black male – a black child, he was only 17 – and not the first I have written about just today.

The buildup. It started with the withholding of the video for 400 days, only to be released on the anniversary of Darren Wilson getting off. It continued today with Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s absurd calls for peace and invocation of family, as if Officer Jason Van Dyke wasn’t a Chicago police officer on the payroll for more than a year after shooting Laquan. It continued with each passing minute of the video.

The rush of the car. It whizzed around with a sickening speed. I could picture the driver pushing the pedal to the metal, like he was in a video game. Like this whole world was a game and he, its master.

The whirr of the passing lights. The car increasingly threatened violence, not just for what its driver could do when he arrived at Laquan’s final destination, but as it jeopardized others with impunity as it drove on the wrong side of the road, sped past residences, and blew through a stop sign.

And then, an excruciating five minutes in, there was Laquan. He was walking away. I was not sure if he was wearing a hoodie (which codes as dangerous to the white gaze on children like him or Trayvon Martin, and as the business attire of Silicon Valley on fellow white people). Because he was so far away from the police cars.

He was walking away. He was so small. He was so small. How could he be a threat? How could a threat be assessed so quickly? In a nation where white men openly carry rifles around the country?

There was little time to think about this, though. About 19 seconds after we first saw him, he twisted in a horrible pirouette and collapsed. A second after he hits the ground, smoke seemed to explode from his body. It was from one of 16 bullets piercing his living being in the few moments he had left on this earth.

The bullets sounded tinny and distant, like in an old arcade game.

I an trying to make sense of this. My brain tries to consider how research shows how white people assume black people to be bigger threats than they are.

My brain struggles in vain to find meaning. But there is no meaning. There is no sense it. It’s just not there.

The pornography of our genocide continues, day by day, week by week, in video after video.

I have just watched the death of a child.

He was so small.