Let us imagine a world in which the US was not obsessed with race. A world in which a man is murdered by a police officer in a horrendous fashion, the police officer was charged with the crime, and the world went on. Perhaps we looked at why such an awful man was given a badge, and fix something about the hiring and training of officers.

What doesn’t happen is a city is set aflame and local business owners have their stores destroyed. We don’t have an ideological group taking ownership of the suffering borne out by the killing. We see it as a deeply tragic occurrence we want to mitigate against going forward. We don’t see it as a reason to burn everything to the ground.

Unsatisfied? You think this is indicative of a larger problem? Cops are racist? Bold claim. At least, it would have been if it weren’t once true. Or if people updated their priors.

More “white” men are killed by police. Really think about that. A “white” man, shot dead, and all of the grief that follows. That happens more often. But “black” men are disproportionately represented in police shootings? They are also disproportionately represented in crimes. They interact with the police more often as a result. The risk of a fatal outcome could be exactly the same (or lower, as some statistics show) and they would still be disproportionately represented in the mortality rate from police intervention.

Why was I using quotations for “white” and “black”? Because what do they even mean? They denote some arbitrary categorisation invented by racists to justify slavery hundreds of years ago, and we cling to them like they say something real about a person. They don’t.

And so I ask once last question; are we better off with America seeing everything through this useless racial lens?