Robinson: Staying home while black, too?

The officer who gunned down Jefferson is white, but the racism in these killings — and it is racism, pure and simple — has less to do with the color of the perpetrators than that of the victims. After all these high-profile incidents, after all the consciousness-raising and all the soul-searching, black lives still are simply not valued the way white lives are. In too many police departments, officers still are being enculturated to see persons of color as both threatening and disposable.

From what we know, the killing of Jefferson was unjustified by any imaginable standard. It was around 2:30 a.m. A neighbor noticed that the lights were on in Jefferson’s house and a door appeared to be open. Knowing that Jefferson and her nephew were there alone, according to news reports, the neighbor called a nonemergency line to ask that someone check to make sure everything was all right.

The officers who responded parked their squad car around the corner and approached stealthily. Body-camera footage released by the Fort Worth police department shows the officers making their way to the backyard and approaching a closed first-floor window. One of them shines a flashlight through the window and yells, “Put your hands up! Show me your hands!” Then he fires through the window, immediately and without identifying himself as a police officer, and Jefferson is killed.

It is progress, I suppose, that police did not seek to suppress the video of the shooting and its aftermath — and also that the officer has resigned and is facing murder charges. Images from inside the house show a firearm, which to me suggests a possible scenario: What if Jefferson heard noises outside, suspected a possible intruder and reached for a weapon to defend herself? According to the National Rifle Association and pro-gun zealots such as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, that’s exactly what a law-abiding citizen should do, right?

It happens that Jefferson, by all accounts, was an upstanding citizen — a graduate of Xavier University, with a degree in biology, who sold pharmaceutical equipment for a living and was thinking about going to medical school. So was Jean, a promising young accountant. So was Castile, who worked in a school cafeteria.

But Jefferson’s character is not relevant to whether she had the right to stay up late in her own home playing Xbox games with her nephew. It is not relevant to whether the young boy had to witness his aunt being brutally killed.

It will not do to write this off as just a horrible mistake — not when such mistakes fit a clear pattern. Far too often, police officers approach situations involving African-Americans with racist assumptions. They see a deadly threat where none exists. They are too quick to draw their weapons and too quick to fire. They shoot first and ask questions later.

Racist attitudes lead to tragic outcomes. Until police departments banish those attitudes, until officers’ default assumption is that black Americans are not suspects but citizens, more innocents like Atatiana Jefferson will die.