The old rituals of childhood are passing away in this newfangled age.
Riding your bicycle on the streets under the lights in summer? Parents are too afraid to even let their progeny touch bicycles. Book-reading has given way to kids on cellphones and iPads. And those old-fashioned knife fights we used to settle beefs are now being broken up by censorious law enforcement officers who think the combatants might pose a threat to each other’s lives.
If that “Sesame Street” standard “One of These Things (Is Not Like the Others)” is playing in your head right now, you’re not alone. But don’t tell that to activist, filmmaker and Black Lives Matter activist Bree Newsome, who has become bad-famous on Twitter after police shot and killed black teenager Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio.
According to The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the girl, who was either 15 or 16 depending on various reports, was shot and killed by an officer Tuesday. Footage from the bodycam, released later that evening by the Columbus Division of Police, shows the officer arriving on the scene as the girl was swinging a knife at another female. The officer yelled for the girl with the knife to get down, but she refused, charging another woman who was pinned against a car — and prompting the officer to shoot her.
“We know based on this footage the officer took action to protect another young girl in our community,” said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who also expressed grief over the death of Bryant.
It’s common knowledge that within minutes of an officer-involved shooting, pretty much everyone with a blue checkmark next to his or her name on Twitter is an expert on all the facts and can tell you, with authoritative glibness, exactly why you’re wrong.
Protesters can tell you that, too, albeit in shouted slogans. In Columbus, they shouted “Say her name!” and “She was just a kid!”
If the officer hadn’t taken action and let another black individual who was a minor die, that would have been their take, too.
The hot takes were also especially raw because the shooting happened just hours before the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. There were plenty of bad ones from people all over the political spectrum.
Newsome’s, however, was a unique sort of bad.
“Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons. We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers,” she tweeted. “Y’all need help. I mean that sincerely.”
Teenagers have been having fights including fights involving knives for eons. We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene & using a weapon against one of the teenagers. Y’all need help. I mean that sincerely.
— DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE, REFUND OUR COMMUNITIES (@BreeNewsome) April 21, 2021
“Everyone should be frightened that the ruling white elite have done such a thoroughly successful job of not only disconnecting us from the means of basic self-sufficiency but also convincing us we need armed white officers to manage our children & communities. Frightening,” Newsome continued.
Everyone should be frightened that the ruling white elite have done such a thoroughly successful job of not only disconnecting us from the means of basic self-sufficiency but also convincing us we need armed white officers to manage our children & communities.
Frightening.
— DEFUND & ABOLISH POLICE, REFUND OUR COMMUNITIES (@BreeNewsome) April 21, 2021
The tweets were still up as of Thursday morning, proof that no amount of well-deserved obloquy can disabuse bad hot-takers of bad hot takes:
A chicken in every pot, a knife in every teen fight. https://t.co/wkUCk5ZGDE
— Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) April 21, 2021
Seems totally appropriate. Let kids have knife fights. Parenting 101.
— Ross Patterson (@StJamesStJames) April 22, 2021
“we should let the kids stab each other to death” is quite the take
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) April 21, 2021
why can’t society just normalize public teenage knife fights
— Steve Beynon (@StevenBeynon) April 21, 2021
You had 9 hours to think about this BS take and it’s still up? ?
— Beth Baumann (@eb454) April 21, 2021
Indeed she did. And consider this was legitimately the worst take to be found on the Columbus shooting.
There’s almost a perverse level of talent in that; keep in mind that NBA star LeBron James tweeted a picture of the police officer who shot the knife-wielder along with the text: “YOU’RE NEXT. #ACCOUNTABILITY.”
(James, never slow to realize when a take could be financially problematic for him, deleted it shortly thereafter and followed up with a self-contradictory not-really apology about how anger doesn’t “do any of us any good” but that his “anger still is here for what happened that lil girl.”)
It’s also worth noting that while it didn’t get much coverage, this happened the same day as the shooting in Columbus:
Crazy that this just happened. https://t.co/3cPQvXv4p1
— yannispappas (@yannispappas) April 22, 2021
In one of those harmless teenage knife fights that don’t require police presence, a 13-year-old died. According to WLWT-TV, Nyaira Givens was allegedly stabbed to death by another 13-year-old during a fight in Cincinnati.
“I held her. I watched her as she died. I watched her, you know. All I could do was just hold her, hold her,” said Maurice Jackson, Nyaira’s father.
“I tried. I tried to stop the bleeding.”
But please, tell us all from the remove of Twitter how police shouldn’t get involved in these things, Bree Newsome. You say these knife fights are a harmless part of puberty. Surely you can explain away this aberration, no?
Correction: An earlier version of this story provided an incorrect description of where the shooting occurred.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
