Epilogue

Abstract

On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, an 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, was fatally shot by a white police officer, Darren Wilson.¹ According to the evidence provided, Brown was unarmed and posed no real danger to Officer Wilson.² Officer Wilson was not indicted for the murder of Michael Brown. It is with the additional state sanction of police violence that I would like to conclude this book. I have to say here that the verdict came as no surprise to me. What, in accordance to my own existential trajectory, is worrisome is the perpetual unaccountability of police violence perpetrated toward black men. I thus asked myself, how could this be? It seems that Randall Kennedy’s conclusion, according to which “the epitome of governmental arrogance and undisciplined power is the police officer, prosecutor, juror, or judge who mistreats people on racial grounds, confident that his or her conduct will remain unchecked,” is actually right.³ As bleak as Kennedy’s lucid conclusion might be for the conventional masses, for me, the lack of police accountability for violence perpetrated toward black men especially does not come as a shocker. Police brutality, as passing the test of consistency when it comes to the fatal shooting of black men, is the unresolvable issue of our time.