Roxane Gay: 'Law Enforcement, Militarized & Indifferent to Black Lives, Is the Problem'

Early Tuesday morning, Alton Sterling was selling CDs in front of a convenience store when two police officers tasered him to the ground. He was then shot and killed. A horrifying 48-second video captured the event.

Queer author Roxane Gay has since penned a poignant essay for The New York Timesin reaction to Sterling's death.

We know what happens now because this brand of tragedy has become routine. The video of Mr. Sterling's death allows us to bear witness, but it will not necessarily bring justice. There will be protest as his family and community try to find something productive to do with sorrow and rage. Mr. Sterling's past will be laid bare, every misdeed brought to light and used as justification for police officers choosing to act as judge, jury and executioner -- due process in a parking lot.

Gay points to the source of the problem: law enforcement.

I don't know where we go from here because those of us who recognize the injustice are not the problem. Law enforcement, militarized and indifferent to black lives, is the problem. Law enforcement that sees black people as criminals rather than human beings with full and deserving lives is the problem. A justice system that rarely prosecutes or convicts police officers who kill innocent people in the line of duty is the problem. That this happens so often that resignation or apathy are reasonable responses is the problem.

Sterling was a father, and Gay calls on us to help black children who have lost parents to senseless police violence.

If the video of his father's death feels too familiar, the video of this child's raw and enormous grief must not. We have to bear witness and resist numbness and help the children of the black people who lose their lives to police brutality shoulder their unnatural burden.

Read Gay's full piece here.