Here is a viral post I saw circulated, submitted for your impressions of the post:

“Cannon Hinnant, a white child, was murdered, and his killer was caught a city away within 24 hours. This is what it’s like to be a white victim in America.

And white people are comparing this case to George Floyd, a Black man who needed weeks of international protests, including the largest social movement in this country’s history, just to get his murderers fired from their jobs, even longer to get charges, and we still can’t be confident they’ll land a conviction. Or to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who still hasn’t gotten a drop of justice, half a year later, after she was shot by police while she was sleeping and then left to die without first aid. This is what it’s like to be a Black victim in America.

And white folks’ conclusion from this comparison is that white people are disadvantaged by this system. That Cannon is given less than George Floyd and others. That nobody cares about Cannon because he doesn’t fit a specific narrative. How? Why? Because Cannon didn’t make it to national news quickly enough for them? (By the way, he made it to national news more quickly than George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or Ahmad Arbery did.)

Wild. Truly wild.

But ever since Europeans kidnapped and human trafficked Africans to this continent to be held in torturous, inherited bondage for centuries to the advantage of white people and their posterity, we’ve always found ways to make Black people look like the bad guys. We’ve always found ways to play the racial victim. I guess at this point, I shouldn’t be surprised at how far white people will go with their racism. I guess it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that so many people’s knee-jerk reaction is to justify hating Black people.

Black Lives Matter protests happen because we can’t count on justice for murdered Black folks. George Floyd was in the news and people were in the streets because they had to be for a hope at justice. I’m glad there is no NEED for protesting over Cannon’s death, no NEED to make it a national headline because we can be confident that our legal system already believes he matters, and he does.

These people think Black lives matter so little that they take advantage of a poor child’s murder and use it as a platform to explain why an unrelated Black man deserved to die.

My heart is heavy for Cannon’s precious life taken far too early. This case hits close to home — it happened in my hometown, a few miles down the road; I was friends with his mother back in the day. It’s a horrible tragedy that should’ve never happened. And I wish Cannon’s memory didn’t have to be tied to anti-Black racism by those who think Black people deserve to die more than white people do, by those who want to take advantage of this tragedy to spread hate, by those who hunt for every excuse why murdered Black people deserved their deaths, why Black families deserve the pain of loss and the absence of justice. Cannon was an innocent child who deserved to live, and white folks are using him as a white-woman-who-cried-whistle.”

-Channel Alston