Augie Reads 2019-2020: Between the World and Me

This collection of charts and statistics from Vox illustrates the substantial racial disparities in the use of force by police in the U.S.

In the aftermath of the murder of two NYC police officers in December 2014, Ta-Nehisi Coates examines why “we” (U.S. citizens broadly speaking) respond differently to killings of police than to killings by police. What does this mean for the possibility of police reform? Do “we” even really want it?

The Nation’s Health, a publication of the American Public Health Association, reports on findings published in the scholarly journal Criminology & Public Policy in February 2017: “Police who fatally shoot civilians may unconsciously be motivated by racial bias.”

Near the beginning of Between the World and Me, Coates writes about watching his son Samori’s reaction to learning the police officer who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, would not be indicted. This article from FiveThirtyEight explains what made the grand jury’s decision unusual, and some possible reasons why it happened anyway.

In July 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted on all charges in the murder of Trayvon Martin. (Note that Zimmerman was not a police officer but rather a resident of the neighborhood where he killed Martin.) Trayvon Martin’s case helped launch the national conversation about shootings of African-American men, and Coates references Martin frequently in his book. This article from the Washington Post focuses on the different responses to Zimmerman’s acquittal nationwide.