Boston’s Jaylen Brown speaks on the shooting of Jacob Blake

Boston Celtics star shooting guard Jaylen Brown shared his thoughts on the shooting of Jacob Blake in his first media appearance since the incident happened this Sunday.

Speaking to the media for he first time since the news of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man shot in the back seven times this past Sunday, swept the nation, Boston Celtics star shooting guard Jaylen Brown appeared understandably somber.

“I would like to continue to demand justice for Breonna Taylor,” began Brown. “I’d also like to encourage guys to get out and vote, and I’d also like to thank the NBA and the Celtics for allowing us to kneel and participate [in] that protest for the national anthem every single night.”

In a moment when we could — should — be able to focus on the Celtics’ second-round matchup with the defending NBA champion Toronto Raptors, instead we were talking about police violence.

Again.

About how the media, almost without exception, unreflexively dredges up the past of every person beaten, choked, or shot to death or nearly so — as if previous mistakes justify the loss of one’s constitutional rights or even their life.

“‘Well, he possibly had a weapon;’ This framework is not unfamiliar to people of color and African Americans,” explained Brown, “nor does it constitute … being shot seven times.

“African Americans and people of color have a history with the police,” he added.

“It comes with the existence of systemic oppression, lack of education, economic opportunity housing, etc. Most people of color, [and] most minority communities have issues with the police. The question is that I would like to ask his view does America think that Black people or people of color are uncivilized, savages and naturally unjust, or are we products of the environments that we participate in?”

“That’s the question I would like to ask America, and America has proven its answer over and over and over again,” emphasized the Georgia native. “Are we not human beings? Is Jacob Blake not a human being?”

Sighing with frustration, Brown struggled to articulate his words without emotion cracking his voice.

“I don’t care if he did something 10 years ago. 10 days ago or 10 minutes ago; if he served his sentence and he was released back into society, he … still deserves to be treated like a human, and [did] not deserve to shot in the back seven times with the intent to kill. His kids will never unsee that, his family will never unsee that, and I will never unsee that.”

“People post my jersey all the time, No. 7; and every time I look at my jersey now, what I see is a black man being shot seven times while America sees this background,” Brown said.

“It’s easier to see that, than see the truth.”

There isn’t much to add to the Cal-Berkeley product’s words. We’d like to believe they were a gross exaggeration.

We’d like to believe this was an isolated incident, that the officers involved were an aberration, and that the general tendency to dig up every past wrong a man has ever made when police are filmed using excessive force was unusual.

But the facts are not on that side, and something has to change.

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