https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide_and_ruleIt's interesting to see how this is playing out; I've considered this term "grouping through category" (group being participatory, category being non-participatory) which describes an individual who takes qualities of their being that differ from others--sex, race, political leaning, religion, and nationality being the top ones ATM--and assigns themselves to a group they feel they must involuntarily participate in, and must protect themselves from groups they believe other people participate in. Of course, a man with black skin, for example, doesn't necessarily identify with a group named "black people"; however, he may feel he has no choice based on his skin color and upbringing. Likewise, he may view people of white skin to all participate in a group called "white people" thus assigning them blame for anything a member or leader of the group "white people" do; the cause is to believe oneself to belong to said group, but the effect others feel is the forced association with people they have nothing to do with (notable examples would be reparations for slavery, or say it's a matter of feminists putting the categorical woman under a group "women", the categorical man under a group "men", and expecting to influence one or the other like "Teach men not to rape" or whatever it is.) Perhaps these are the fundamental causes of social discrimination--racism, sexism, you name it--whether positive discrimination or negative.
As a result, individuals who identify themselves as being part of a group, and who identify others by the same category as participating in groups, feel they are owed something for the negative consequences of what happens to other people within their group. Ergo, in this case, the group "black people"--not the category of people with black skin or are otherwise of African descent--treats their own as the victim of a hate crime in hopes of some kind of greater retribution than would normally be obtained; people who give handouts to the 4th-tier group called "Unfortunates" (we'll call this group "The Guilties"), which includes the 3rd-tier group "Minorities", will look favorably upon this 2nd-tier group "black people" (with 1st-tier being subcultures within that group) and potentially reward them with whatever. It's simple human behavior, path of least resistance: if there's an easier way out, or no viable other way out (poverty is a bitch during the late stages of empire), then people will take it. In this case, there's something to be gained, so people expend energy to obtain it.
But the larger effect of this, perhaps, as I've linked above, is the fact that people, when divided into these tiny little groups, become significantly less powerful with fewer members, and the more divisions a person experiences--say they "involuntarily" participate in the groups "man", "Hispanic" and "American"--the less individual power they have over their lives, and must refer to their "party leaders" for guidance on all matters. It's like intellectual feudalism: you're allowed only to think within the confines of your group that you are allotted, and the further down the chain you are, the less you'll have to work with. It worked well for religion, with >98% of any religion's members being the peasants who are expected to simply submit to the word of God, and then you had the <2%, who are allowed to interpret or even scribe the word of God; I think the exact same phenomenon is occurring with issues such as these.
From what I understand about the case, Michael was attempting to charge at the police officer, when he was shot down; however, it's being painted as though Michael was an innocent nobody being targeted for a race/class crime. This is similar to the Trayvon Martin case, where a boy who lived by the thug life, died by the thug life, but was painted like he was an angel and victim of a hate crime; I have plenty of rational friends, and even some of them succumbed to the propaganda machine this time around, so I have no doubt that such tactics are effective on most people. Michael to me seemed like your run-of-the-mill thug, and while I'll always empathize that a person had to be subject to that kind of environment, his actions were his alone and the purposeful obfuscation of clearly negative facts about Michael is not the way to serve justice.
Also, to be fair, the people are in the video are indeed saying "indicted", not "dead"; it's eerie how far from the truth a racist will go to justify himself.
