Ma'at was the Egyptian Goddess of Truth, Justice and Order. Her headdress ostrich feather served as the ultimate arbiter of the goodness of a man's life, and was balanced against a newly deceased person's heart on the scales of justice as a precondition of being permitted to pass into the Afterlife. Those whose hearts were heavy with wicked deeds had their souls devoured immediately by the demigod Ammin. Only those whose were lighter than Ma'at's feather were permitted to pass through into immortality with the Gods.
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Is Tomorrow "The Day" (And Ya'll Know What I Mean)
The NYPD officers who riddled Sean Bell with 50 bullets on the eve of his wedding have been acquitted of all charges following a bench trial. A bench trial in which the judge said, pretty much point blank in comments that were uncalled for and evince a certain mindset in a so-called objective judicial officer, that the prosecution witnesses were simply "not believable."
The most surprising part is how utterly unsurprising the verdict was. And how utterly unsurprising the majority of reactions at NYTimes.com reader's comment page have been, so far - aka Sean Bell got what was coming to him. They mirror the mindset of the judge, truthfully.
Since we all know that Black folks don't get murdered by the police, no matter what color hte police are. Never. No matter what.
I know differently, having now lived a long time. Black men's lives in America continue to be worth not the spit that the cops drop when they blow them away. I wish that we'd just own up to it, frankly - because I grow weary of pretending that there will ever be an unjustified killing of a black person by police in the US where someone actually goes to jail.
And yet folks still appear clueless about why so many of us are so damned angry, all the time.
