It's Not Skin Color

Things like this make me sick.

Down in Mississippi, a 19-year-old girl -- same age as my granddaughter, and looks a little like her -- was brutally, viciously, and horrifically murdered by something calling itself a man.

It happens, in this case, the victim was white and the alleged murderer is black.  Apparently they were in a relationship, she wanted to break up, so he poured lighter fluid into her mouth and nose and set her on fire.

I've known a number of interracial couples.  I've never known any of them to set a spouse on fire.  I don't think it's typical.  A lot of white girls are brutalized and even killed by white boyfriends and husbands.  Sometimes black boyfriends and husbands hurt and kill black girls.  Shoot, sometimes wives kill their husbands.

What happened to that little girl in Mississippi wasn't a "hate" crime.  It wasn't the result of blacks and whites living together.  It was a crime against humanity.  It was a crime against decency.

Frankly, if that had been my granddaughter, and I got to the perpetrator first, they wouldn't be able to tell what color he was anyway.

It makes me sick to think of what the girl suffered.  It makes me sick, too, to see how some people are handling it.  Some of these people are complaining about the news media not making a national issue out of it because it doesn't fit the agenda of whites oppressing blacks.  That's silly.  It's not being reported nationally because it is not a national story. Domestic violence is a common, everyday occurrence in every nook and cranny in this country.  Sadly.

Sadly, too, police brutality and misconduct are becoming about as common.  Still, putting the police on notice and changing the attitudes and behaviors of police departments ought to be a national issue and a priority.  Police officers have to be held accountable and held to the same or higher standards as the rest of the citizenry.

The reason we need to make a big deal out of the Michael Brown shooting (possibly justified) or Eric Garner's death (completely unjustified) is that these incidents are markers of the ever-burgeoning police state.  It's not black versus white.  It's freedom versus tyranny.  It's the state versus the individual.  It's the rule of law versus lawlessness.  Get it right.