Coates in the Atlantic:
And this was the summer of Jordan Davises, the summer of bodies when every day, a black parent could log on to the Internet and see the bodies of black people choked into oblivion, beaten on the side of the road, stalked and raped, tased for straying too long, pistol-whipped for running too fast, shot down for mental illness, shot down for cos-play, shot down for allegedly ignoring orders, shot down for too quickly obeying orders.
“I’m still watching,” McBath told me. “It might be a different circumstance, but it all brings back to my mind what happened with Jordan. This is what certain individuals believe about black people. Our forefathers have spent a lot effort trying to get rid of these prejudicial ideas.”
I asked her about Trayvon Martin. And she told me again that Jordan had been horrified by Martin’s shooting. “Jordan kept saying, ‘Mom, that could have been me. Mom, that could have been me.’ We talked at length,” she said. “He said, ‘He didn’t even do anything wrong.’ And I told him, ‘Jordan, you don’t have to be doing anything wrong. You are a young black male and they are certain people who will never give you respect.'”