A black Spiderman won’t stop the police from shooting another unarmed black man.
Making Captain Kirk black won’t do it, nor will swapping the hues on Luke Skywalker.
You can name a black child the poet laureate of the United States and spend millions on poetry initiatives for historically underserved populations, but that won’t alter this reality.
More money to black poetry organizations won’t save an innocent life from becoming another awful statistic.
You can pour billions of dollars into dance programs, writing programs, art programs, and inclusivity initiatives and not a single dime in all those millions of millions will change the problem.
Because the problem isn’t with black poets, black artists, black dancers, and black performers.
The problem is with the police. The problem is the dark tetrad of personality in the people who seek to become and eventually do become our nation’s police officers.
We clamor for inclusivity but the problem isn’t inclusivity, it’s insanity behind the barrel of a gun.
When the answer comes at last, it won’t be pretty. It won’t break norms for form and language. It won’t be triumph of human expression.
The answer will be couched in the same tired nomenclature the social sciences have always used: an F-test followed by a p value much less than .05.
My Job Is Scaring You 