Born a Crime

the middle of the game. A security
guard, seeing the cat, did what any
sensible black person would do. He
said to himself, “That cat is a
witch.” He caught the cat and—live
on TV—he kicked it and stomped it
and beat it to death with a sjambok,
a hard leather whip.
It was front-page news all over
the country. White people lost their
shit. Oh my word, it was insane.
The security guard was arrested
and put on trial and found guilty of
animal abuse. He had to pay some
enormous fine to avoid spending
several months in jail. What was
ironic to me was that white people
had spent years seeing video of
black people being beaten to death
by other white people, but this one
video of a black man kicking a cat,