Tyre Nichols’s Death Raises Questions About Race and Policing

It feels callous and opportunistic to turn a man’s death into a moment for political and social commentary. Ghoulish pundits with tendentious takes are a staple of the 24-hour social media and cable news circus. A mother has lost a son. A young man, by all accounts, wholly innocent of any crime, has lost his life in a most degrading and brutal way. The decent, immediate human response is emotional: grief, sympathy, anger.

But just as the conscience cries out for retribution, the mind calls for some understanding, some larger meaning in the anguish. We look for cause and consequence in our wider society and legitimately ask what we can learn.

One understandable but inadequate take on the killing of Tyre Nichols is the idea that we should feel some satisfaction that justice works. Five police officers beat a young black man to a pulp, rendering him lifeless on the street and he dies three days later. The men are all quickly fired, arrested and charged with murder. Thus, the panglossian says, the majesty of the law at work. Awful as it was, there is no larger lesson here beyond man’s unending capacity for inhumanity to man. A terrible crime is committed, quickly investigated and resolved, and the wheels of justice are swiftly set in motion.