Death And A Blogger

Ta-Nehisi explains his own mixed feelings after the cop-killing of a friend of his and the 9/11 attacks:

I think I'm an atheist who's yet to come to terms with this fact. I didn't have a spiritual lens to interpret Prince's death or 9/11. I never believed in spirits sending you messages in dreams. But I did have a very concrete epiphany. The world had ended for my old friend, much as it had ended for all the victims of 9/11. But whereas we were hell-bent on bringing justice to Al'Qaeda, I knew that there would be no justice for Prince. The cop would keep his job, they'd rule the murder justifiable, and people would accept the death of a hard-working father, and a college student, the way they accepted the death of Patrick Dorismond and Amadou Diallo. It's the cost of doing business. And it's a cost born mostly by us.

I can't tell you how angry that made me.