Police kill a white teen, and the silence raises questions

Washington Post     Many of us are just hearing about the police shooting that claimed the life of 19-year-old Zachary Hammond on July 26.

The news lands with that familiar, convulsive ache that the death of young people brings. That a year of police-involved killings has given us.

The teenager, on a first date, was stopped in the parking lot of a Seneca, S.C., Hardee’s during a drug bust, and the officer contends he fired in self-defense as Hammond tried to run him over. His 23-year-old date was charged with possession of 10 grams (.35 ounces) of marijuana. And it feels like a life gone over so much nothing.

Yet Hammond’s killing, under cloudy circumstances — a police report never mentions the fatal gunshots — has not sparked national protests. It has not pricked us the way Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, Brandon Jones, Eric Harris and Freddie Gray did. The way the killing of Samuel DuBose most recently and under the most similar circumstances did. (DuBose was also behind the wheel; the Cincinnati officer who shot him alleged that DuBose was dragging him as he was taking off.)

Hammond’s family contends that the unequal outrage is because Hammond is white. [...]