James Innes-Smith

Why is BLM blaming Tyre Nichols’ death on ‘white supremacy’?

Tyre Nichols (Credit: Deandre Nichols)

The video of Tyre Nichols’ arrest makes for unbearable viewing. The 29-year-old father is dragged out of a car before being set upon by five black policemen. Lawyers for his family said the officers acted like a ‘pack of wolves’; after watching the film, it’s hard to dispute that description.

As the backlash to the incident in Memphis on 10 January intensifies, there are plenty of unanswered question. But it seems that Black Lives Matter is already jumping to conclusions. Any hope that Nichols’ horrifying death might spark some unity in the United States has been dashed by the release of a demoralising statement from BLM. Rather than using Nichols’ death to campaign for meaningful reform, BLM has doubled down on its mission to defund the police while suggesting any violence perpetrated against people of colour is automatically racist. 

‘Tyre should be alive today,’ says D’Zhane Parker, a board member for the BLM ‘Global Network Foundation’. That’s a view we can, of course, all agree on – but the tone of the BLM statement soon veers off into the hazy netherworld of systemic racism.

‘He mattered to everyone,’ the statement continues ‘except those upholding state-sanctioned violence and a dangerous cycle of white supremacy.’ 

‘Today, our community is grieving another beautiful Black life stolen by state sanctioned violence. There continues to be a consistent failure of our current public safety model to protect Black lives and communities’.

BLM’s statement about ‘state sanctioned violence’ omits an important detail: the five officers involved in the incident have been charged with second-degree murder.

There is no doubt that the White House needs to urgently get a grip on the relentless cycle of police brutality. But the action taken against these officers shows that this incident, while horrifying, is no more ‘sanctioned’ by the state that the killing of George Floyd in 2020.

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