"But it is less likely that the officer would have panicked were Castile a white gun owner, like those who freely walked the streets of Ferguson carrying automatic rifles after Michael Brown, a teenager who carried no weapon, was shot dead. "

Above right: Tony Robinson,
whose slaying by the Madison Police Officer (top left)
was excused by Dane County (WI) District Attorney
Ismael Ozanne.
Read why that was the wrong decision made by the wrong system.

It's hard not to think that white people, and white police officers in particular, have created a system in which people think the only choice is to violently revolt against their oppressors.

This article, by Andy Cush on Gawker, explains in part how white people have created a world in which black people's lives are considered de minimis and black people can be shot for "crimes" that white people would not even receive a ticket for. It's where the quote comes from in the post title.

When you wholesale authorize the execution of people based on their race, and your fear and condescension and hatred of that race -- as authorities and particularly white people (but not all white people, as District Attorney Ismael Ozanne of Dane County demonstrates)-- you create conditions in which that set of people will view themselves as at war.

Hopefully, the shootings in Dallas will not be seen 100 years from now as the events that set off a race war. My own opinion has been that there will be a class war, similar to the French Revolution, but, then, most blacks are relegated to lower-class status by 200+ years of institutionalized, almost congential, racism, so it may be six of one...

The media is going to go nuts, and the right wing especially, over the killing of 11 Dallas police officers. Exactly none of those stories will mention that so far in 2016 police have killed 604 people. People killing people with guns is what happens when you arm people with guns. That's what guns do. Cops killing black people with guns is what happens when you hand guns to a largely white power structure built on 200+ years of racism.  Going back 20 years, study after study has shown that most judges are white males. Going back 30 years, whites make up on average 70% of police forces, We have created a society where people of one race are taught to look down on the other races, then put in charge, and given guns.

I don't condone the shootings of the Dallas police officers. But I understand why they happened. Unless white people start treating black people like people, and unless white cops stop shooting black men, it's going to keep happening.