Oh, if only Blackfolk could be treated as kindly and humanely as 14-year-old Colt Gray, the mass murderer who shot up that Georgia high school and killed four people – two teachers and two students. He also wounded nine others.
Shooting Details
Investigators say Gray brought the “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to school with him on Sept. 4 in his backpack. While the weapon could not be broken down, officials say the teen was able to hide it in his bag.
During one class, he asked his teacher if he could go to the front office and “speak to someone.”
After getting permission, the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) reports that “the teen” took his bag and went to the restroom to hide from teachers. A short time later, he took out his rifle and began shooting.
Minutes after the first reports of shots fired Gray was apprehended by police without incident and arrested.
His father, Colin Gray, was also arrested for allegedly purchasing the AR-15-style gun used in the shooting, despite knowing his son was troubled and potentially in need of “mental health treatment,” the prognosis always mentioned when a mass shooter is white. His father gave the 14-year-old the military-grade killing machine as a Christmas gift (you know… because NRA Jesus) purchased from a store just six miles from Apalachee High School, the location of the mass murder.
The Reporting
The FOC 5 Atlanta I-Team reported that Colt lived with his father, while his two younger siblings lived with their mother, Marcee Gray, who was arrested for damaging her husband’s truck last year. During the arrest of Colt’s mother, officers found methamphetamines, fentanyl, and a glass pipe in her possession, resulting in a 46-day jail sentence.
It’s been over two weeks since this horrible tragedy, but it feels like it’s been longer. One reason is that no one is talking about it anymore. And when they were, the focus was not on 1) demonizing the teenage shooter 2) demanding that he be tried as an adult for his heinous crime or 3) blasting daily news reports with the fact that Colt surely must have been a thug and heavily involved in gangs since his dad gave him the gun and his mother was a drug seller or addict, or both.
And, 4) there was no talk about the “ghetto conditions” in which Colt was raised that surely produced a “monster.” There was zero mention that Colt came from a “broken home” in a drug-infested part of town by adults who had no business having children.
The narrative about the Apalachee shooter 5) hasn’t been about white male violence being the standard of US violence, the literal face of US mass murders or 6) how inherently evil Colt must have been to initiate such violence because he fits the profile.
No. The conversation has been focused solely on “the system,” and how “the system” failed Colt. Not how it failed the four people who were murdered. Not how it failed all those children and teachers and workers in that school and any school across the U.S. who live daily in fear of such violence visiting them because of feckless Republican lawmakers committing to riding the jock of the NRA. Not how “the system” has failed the entire nation; a nation where the Apalachee shooting was the 385th just this year alone.
If only the system had been on the job, poor Colt, who, it has been mentioned a million times, needed mental health support, wouldn’t have been subjected to the mistreatment of having to go shoot up a school because the system let him down.
If the shooter were Black…
Not sure if you’ve been keeping score, but we’ve listed six ways Colt was treated better than Trayvon Martin, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Sandra Black, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, etc. and those Miami Dolphins players who were pulled over for a traffic violation on their way to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium to play their first game of the 2024 NFL season.
Blacks, whether suspected shooters or verified shooting victims or verified police profiling victims don’t receive half the empathy and support as Colt… who killed four people. If we commit a crime or are even suspected of committing a crime (and it doesn’t even have to involve a death), we are demonized like Trayvon and Freddie Gray. Hell, Blackfolk are demonized and criminalized for birdwatching while Black; studying in a college dorm while Black; selling water or lemonade while Black as an elementary-aged little Black girl. Our youth are cast as adults, and the calls are for our children to be tried as adults and thrown in adult prisons.
Media outlets run with whatever horrible adjectives police and their spokespersons label us with (gang member, thug, animal, etc.). And wherever we live, if we’re suspected of a crime, our hood is labeled a crime-ridden ghetto. And then comes all the talk about Black culture producing criminals on GP. And then media and politicians go in again on any Black suspect as being inherently evil and deserving of being “put down,” like Trump did regarding the now “Exonerated Five.”
Oh yeah… and had the Apalachee HS shooter been Black, we already know, he wouldn’t have been apprehended without incident. There was more violence inflicted by those Miami cops who pulled over NFL players than Colt endured.
No Empathy for Us
Dolphins all-world WR Tyreek Hill was harassed, handcuffed, and thrown to the ground. Some say he had an attitude with the cops. Personally, I’ve seen white people cuss out, spit on, kick, and punch police and still get treated better than Hill did.
Not only that, two of Hill’s teammates, driving in another vehicle, pulled over to make sure their teammate and friend survived the police encounter. One of them, 17-year NFL veteran and former NFL Man of the Year winner Calais Campbell for his commitment to community service and empowerment, was verbally berated and threatened by police before being handcuffed as well, simply for having the human decency to make sure his friend was okay amid a dangerous and threatening situation.
Where’s the chatter about how the system failed Hill and Campbell? Oh yeah, that chatter was shut down when the NFL white-balled Colin Kaepernick.
None of this madness changes, however, until 1) this nation has an open and honest conversation about its racist history and current reality. And that won’t happen until 2) Black people have institutional power. Without it, there’s no compelling reason (or compelling hand/force) to force this nation to have that necessary and uncomfortable dialogue.
