Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts contends it means suicide: when a heart-disease-ridden, hypertensive, morbidly obese man decides to take PCP and cocaine and confront police, he chooses death.
But isn’t this the same as saying that when a regular ol’ black man decides to drive in a white neighborhood after dark he chooses to get pulled over? It’s not the fact of Jones’ erratic behavior or self-destructive habits that is at issue. It is the fact that the policemen who dealt with him chose to use such excessive force. Would they have treated a white man in the same circumstances the same way?
On the other hand, individual responsibility does come into play. Our mythos requires of us a certain common sense. It’s the law of the West, after all: one does not go into winter without laying up a good stock of fatback and firewood. Likewise one does not request a showdown with the local tin star constabulary after a night of drinking at the saloon and expect to be the one left standing when the credits roll.
It is painful to watch the police cruiser video of Nathaniel Jones. But must he die so that our myth may live?
It means that in 2003 white cops can still beat a black man to death in America and get away with it.
That’s what it means.