The New American Lynching

I love community.

Sparked by an interview I recently heard on the radio, I’ve been working over the past week to assemble my thoughts about gentrification. The complexity of the topic is attested to by the fact that most of what I read about gentrification is either biased to the point of being insulting to intellect or so convoluted that all logical argument or relevance to economics is utterly lost.

Giving my thoughts, then, to the charged topics of economics, race, community, inclusion, exclusion and new and old antagonisms affecting our neighborhoods and our nation — I couldn’t have been more sickened to read about the apparent lynching of a census worker.

With the word “fed”  somehow scrawled upon his chest, the murder suggests itself to be related to the victim’s part-time community data gathering work in his home state of Kentucky. This was a man who thought it was safe to knock on doors and talk with neighbors. According to one person he interviewed “he ask[ed]  some basic questions including the size of her house, how many rooms it had and how much she paid monthly for electricity.”

Is our world so out-of-kilter that someone would be killed for simply quantifying the reality of our American neighborhoods and communities?

UPDATE: It’s actually so out-of-kilter that it now seems Mr Sparkman took his own life in this convoluted manner in effort to have his life insurance pay out. If this is true, it puts everything in a different and even more horrifying perspective. God help us all.

Bill Sparkman, peace be with you, regardless.