Diversity training won’t fix this.  Carefully crafted apologies are absurd.  Protests and candle light vigils miss the point and the greater need.  I don’t want to hold hands and sing of what will be.  I don’t want to reenact it, create a choreography that walks in his footsteps.

And justice is not the word.  I’ll know it when I hear it or maybe when I say it.  But, I am sure that I don’t need justice; I’ve had enough of social justice.  I’ve seen what happens when we hold the scales, how they are tipped in favor of one group or the other, depending upon how much money is put in them.

Anger won’t bring him back; his back is turned from us now.  He’s no longer with us but has joined the wrongfully dead.

There are just no words that come to mind when I watch the video of Mr. Walter Scott running away because unlike the police officer who claimed he felt threatened, perhaps, it was Mr. Scott who got the feeling that he was in danger.  He’s unarmed.  He’s got nothing.  Unless you want to argue that the social coloring of his skin is a threat.  He’s a “black” man so beware!

But, I’m not buying it and please don’t attempt to sell me another story of self- defense.  I don’t want to hear about the “color of criminality.”  Let me stop you.  I’ve heard this one before.

His mother and others are saying that South Carolina police officer Michael Slager is a “good person.”  Yes and so was Mr. Scott.  He was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation and then he was shot five times as he ran away.  No warning.  No request to get the car fixed.  No ticket.

There is a word in the Bible that appears almost exclusively in the Psalms with the exception of the book of Habakkuk: Selah.  Some consider it a musical symbol that suggests that one should pause and reflect on what has been said.  I don’t know what to say but when I watched the video, I just had to stop and think about what I had just witnessed.  Murder.  Selah.