Months before Ahmaud Arbery was killed, shooter Travis McMichael wrote a simple, chilling response to a Facebook post about a suspected car burglary in his Georgia neighborhood: “Arm up.”
At a time of broad reexamination of race, criminal justice and the role of technology, such online neighborhood forums in the U.S. have a troubling tendency to veer from wholesome community chitchat to anxious hypervigilance when suspicion is the discussion topic
“These platforms serve as vehicles to amplify and echo a feeling that your community is under assault. There’s a way in which white vigilante-ism is praised and in a way in which Black existence is criminalized. “
Steven Renderos via the Los Angeles Times
