Latest / When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom / The Lie Is the Point: Who Gets to Be an American When State Violence Is Justified

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The Lie Is the Point: Who Gets to Be an American When State Violence Is Justified · When Killers Get Caught with Brittany Ransom

0:04
Every time a black person is killed, the lie arrives faster
0:08
than the facts. He had a gun, he was high, she
0:13
was threatening. He went for his weapon.
0:16
He looked dangerous. He whistled before the name is
0:20
even cold. On the timeline, the
0:21
justification is already trending.
0:24
And lately, something else has been trending too.
0:27
People saying they're killing Americans now.
0:30
And every time I hear that, something in my chest drops
0:33
because what I and A lot of black people and people of color
0:37
aren't hearing is concern. We're hearing a revelation.
0:41
It's the quiet part being said out loud, because the now
0:45
implies that there was a time when this didn't count, and
0:49
implies that there was a group that this violence belonged to.
0:53
And it implies that some deaths only become unjust once they've
0:57
reached the right people. I want to pause here and say
1:00
this clearly. If you consider yourself an
1:03
ally, or if you're confused by the anger and grief you're
1:06
seeing from people of color right now, I need you to stay
1:09
with me for this episode. Please don't scroll away.
1:12
Please don't tune it out. This matters more than any
1:15
solitary case. My name is Brittany Ransom and
1:18
this is when killers get caught, and I had a true crime episode
1:22
planned for this week. It was researched, outlined, and
1:25
every time I sat down and recorded, I couldn't because
1:27
something bigger is happening in this country and pretending this
1:31
is just another isolated tragedy feels dishonest.
1:34
For five years, you have trusted me to talk about violence,
1:37
justice and accountability with honesty.
1:41
So today, instead of a case, I need to talk to you about a
1:44
pattern. I need to talk about the lie,
1:47
and I need to explain why that phrase they're killing Americans
1:50
now is landing like confirmation for people who have been buried
1:55
under this violence for generations.
1:59
This episode isn't about politics.
2:01
It isn't about partisanship. It's about citizenship, who gets
2:04
it, who is conditional for, and who only seems to count once
2:08
It's already too late. If you have ever trusted my
2:11
perspective before, I'm asking you to stop and listen now when
2:18
people say they're killing Americans now.
2:19
The word now is doing some heavy lifting.
2:23
It implies that there was a before a time when this kind of
2:26
violence was tolerated. It implies there was a group
2:29
this violence belonged to, and implies that a line was only
2:33
crossed when the victim fit a narrow definition of who
2:36
qualifies as an American. For many Black people and people
2:41
of color, that statement does not register as outrage.
2:44
It registers as a confirmation. Confirmation that our deaths
2:47
were never understood as civic crises, that our citizenship was
2:51
always conditional, that we were seen not as full participants in
2:57
the social contract. But that is exceptions to it,
3:01
acceptable losses within IT. When you hear names like George
3:05
Floyd, Sonia Massey, Tamir Rice, Eric Gartner, Ayanna Stanley
3:09
Jones, Philando Castile, Brianna Taylor or Sandra Bland, it
3:14
didn't provoke the same language, the same urgency, or
3:17
the same insistence. That this isn't who we are
3:23
signals something deeply unsettling.
3:27
The same is true for cases like Quanfang and Fang Lee.
3:30
Their deaths did not produce sustained national reckoning.
3:34
We also spent much of 2025 watching Hispanic communities
3:38
subjected to mass detention and dehumanization with little
3:42
public response. Indigenous Americans continue to
3:45
be detained and harmed with minimal attention.
3:48
Yet the killing of a white civilian suddenly reframes this
3:51
issue as unprecedented violence. And that disparity matters not
3:56
because anyone death is more tragic than another, but because
3:59
selective recognition fractures movements and it erodes trust.
4:04
Solidarity cannot survive if people feel like their humanity
4:08
is only acknowledged retroactively or conditionally.
4:12
What white Americans must understand is this proximity to
4:16
privilege is not immunity. White supremacy is always
4:20
conditional. It protects compliance, not
4:24
conscience. We have seen this before during
4:28
Jim Crow. White Americans who stood
4:30
alongside black people, who challenged segregation, who
4:33
organized, who refused to uphold racial terror.
4:38
They were beaten alongside of us.
4:40
Some of them were jailed. Some were outright murdered.
4:43
Their whiteness did not save them once they broke ranks with
4:46
a system that demanded their silence.
4:49
And that history matters because it makes clear that what is
4:52
happening now is not an aberration.
4:55
When people step outside the boundaries of what power allows,
4:58
when they question authority, when they dispute the hierarchy,
5:01
the system responds the way it always has, with force.
5:06
Both good and Cratty were not targeted because whiteness
5:09
suddenly stopped existing. They were targeted because they
5:12
stopped performing obedience. Good was a queer, outspoken
5:17
woman who was unwilling to submit.
5:20
She challenged misogyny and authority simultaneously, and
5:23
that resistance was met with violence.
5:26
Pretty was similarly punished for defiance, ignoring federal
5:29
agents, intervening on behalf of someone who was being harmed,
5:33
and refusing to perform deference to their power.
5:37
That active refusal was met with force, captured from multiple
5:40
angles in public view. This is the lesson that history
5:45
keeps offering us. The moment privilege is mistaken
5:48
for protection, people are caught unprepared.
5:51
Compliance might buy temporary safety, but has never guaranteed
5:55
justice. That reality is not new.
5:57
It is simply more familiar now than it has been in the past.
6:04
Now, black Americans are often told after moments like this,
6:07
This isn't who we are. This isn't what America stands
6:09
for. The system failed, but a system
6:11
cannot fail. It's something it was never
6:13
designed to prevent. From the very beginning,
6:16
American citizenship has been conditional granted selectively,
6:20
enforced unevenly, and withdrawn whenever it became inconvenient.
6:24
In 1790, the Naturalization Act restricted citizenship to free
6:28
white persons, and in 1857, Dred Scott versus Sanford made it
6:32
explicit. Black people, enslaved or free,
6:35
were said to have no rights, which the white man was bound to
6:38
respect. After slavery, Black codes and
6:42
vagrancy laws criminalize Black existence to preserve control.
6:46
In another form, Plessy versus Ferguson told us that
6:49
segregation was constitutional as long as inequality was made
6:53
orderly. Even when rights were finally
6:56
acknowledged on paper, they were never enforced equally in
6:59
practice. So citizenship became
7:01
conditional on race, on behavior, on how non threatening
7:04
you appear in someone else's imagination.
7:07
But the same logic didn't stop with just black Americans.
7:10
Chinese immigrants were excluded by law in 1882.
7:13
Japanese Americans, most of them citizens, were imprisoned during
7:17
World War 2 under Korematsu versus the United States, not
7:21
because they had done anything wrong, but for who they might
7:24
be. Mexican Americans were deported
7:27
in Mass during the 30s and then again during Operation Wetback,
7:32
which is I can't believe that's legally what they called that,
7:37
but it was often done without regard for their citizenship.
7:40
Puerto Ricans were surveilled, sterilized, and met with state
7:43
violence despite being legal American citizens.
7:48
Each time the justification was the same national security,
7:51
public safety order, and each time due process was treated as
7:55
optional. So when it's good or pratty is
7:58
killed and people suddenly say this is unjust, what many of us
8:01
are hearing is not awakening. It's timing.
8:04
It sounds like, Oh, so it counts now.
8:09
And that doesn't feel like solidarity.
8:11
It feels like being told, again, that our deaths have always been
8:14
background noise, that violence only becomes a national crisis
8:18
once it reaches people who were assumed to be safe from it.
8:22
This isn't about denying anyone's humanity.
8:24
It's about recognizing how long ours has been debated.
8:30
See, the lie is never about the truth.
8:32
It's about permissions. It doesn't matter if the gun was
8:37
fake, as it was with Tamir Rice, because American law has long
8:41
allowed lethal force based on perceived threat rather than
8:43
actual danger. It doesn't matter if the drugs
8:46
were irrelevant to the case, as they were with George Floyd,
8:48
because criminalization has always been used to posthumously
8:51
justify violence, from slave patrol reports to modern police
8:55
press releases. It doesn't matter if the water
8:57
on the stove was boiling, like in Sonia Massey's case, because
9:01
ordinary actions have historically been reframed as
9:03
threatening when performed by Black bodies.
9:06
It doesn't matter if the threat was entirely imaginary, as it
9:09
was with Elijah McClain, because fear itself has always been
9:13
treated as sufficient evidence. And it does not matter if the
9:17
accusation was a myth like it was with Emmett Till, because
9:21
American history shows us that the claim has never needed to be
9:23
true, only believable to a certain audience.
9:27
It's not new, guys. During slavery, enforcers
9:31
documented punishments as discipline to justify torture.
9:35
During Reconstruction, Black Codes criminalized unemployment
9:39
and loitering to justify arresting people and forcing
9:42
them into labor. During the Jim Crow era,
9:45
lynchings were routinely defended as responses to alleged
9:48
threats that were later proven false, if they were investigated
9:52
at all. In the early 20th century,
9:55
police reports and newspapers regularly framed Black victims
9:59
as aggressors to rationalize mob of violence and state inaction.
10:04
The lie has always functioned the same way.
10:07
Not to investigate what happened, but to explain why it
10:10
just didn't matter. And that logic was later
10:14
codified into law in Graham versus Connor.
10:17
In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that police use of force must be
10:21
judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer in the
10:24
moment, not by its actual outcome, not by the harm it
10:28
caused, and not by facts that we learned afterward.
10:32
That standard prioritizes perception over reality.
10:38
In Tennessee versus Garner 1985, lethal force was limited in
10:43
theory, but still allowed wherever an officer claims to
10:46
perceive a significant threat. In other words, the system
10:49
doesn't require the lie to even be true, and only requires it to
10:52
be legible. America just keeps recycling the
10:56
same justification because it works.
10:59
It dulls the public outrage by shifting focus away from the
11:02
violence itself. It stalls accountability by
11:04
turning every death into a debate and the victims
11:06
worthiness. And it transforms the public
11:09
into a jury and asks us to evaluate character rather than
11:13
conduct. While the state's power is
11:16
presumed legitimate by default, this isn't an institutional
11:20
breakdown. This is institutional
11:22
continuity. The lie is not a bug in the
11:24
system, it's a feature. James Baldwin said it plainly in
11:30
1964, and nothing personal. The violence was being
11:34
perpetuated mainly against black men and so it didn't count.
11:37
But if a society permits 1 portion of its citizenry to be
11:40
menaced or destroyed, then very soon no one in that society is
11:43
safe. Baldwin was not speculating, he
11:46
was documenting a pattern that was already decades old.
11:49
He went on to warn the forces thus released in the people can
11:53
never be held in check, but run their devouring course,
11:57
destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would
12:00
save. And finally, he named the cost.
12:04
What we are struggling against is that death in the heart,
12:07
which leads to not only the shedding of blood, but which
12:10
reduces human beings to corpses while they live.
12:14
I'll say it again, it didn't count.
12:17
That's the context that a lot of people are missing right now.
12:20
Because when violence is permitted against one group long
12:23
enough, a country doesn't become safer.
12:25
It becomes practiced at explaining itself and learns the
12:30
language of evasion. It develops A moral callous.
12:34
This is why black Americans are so angry.
12:36
Not confused, not shocked, but furious because the nation did
12:41
not fail to understand what was happening.
12:43
It learned how to survive it. How to anesthetize itself with
12:47
character assassination, how to call murder contacts and
12:50
brutality complexity. How to replace accountability
12:54
with endless debates over tone, compliance and perceived threat.
12:58
And every time we accept this setup.
13:00
Was he really reaching? Was she really threatening?
13:03
We are participating in the lie because those questions are
13:06
never asked in good faith. It's not designed to uncover the
13:10
truth. It's designed to decide whose
13:12
life is worth defending after the fact.
13:16
Baldwin warned us that once a society normalizes this kind of
13:19
moral triage, the violence cannot remain contained.
13:23
And the same logic that once rendered black suffering
13:26
invisible will expand outward because the system is already
13:30
learned that it can. This is in hindsight.
13:33
It's history speaking in real time.
13:36
And here's the uncomfortable truth.
13:39
What's happening now doesn't feel new to us.
13:42
What feels new is who people are finally willing to recognize as
13:46
victims. The machinery didn't suddenly
13:49
appear. It didn't suddenly become
13:51
violent. It didn't suddenly abandoned
13:54
restraint or due process. This system was built with those
13:57
exceptions already baked in. What changed is not the behavior
14:01
of the state. It's the identity of the people
14:03
now caught in the gears. The violence didn't escalate.
14:06
It simply expanded into spaces where it was never supposed to
14:10
go. For generations, there have been
14:13
an unspoken understanding about who this system exists to
14:16
protect, who it is allowed to discipline, contain or discard.
14:20
Some people were always treated as citizens, and others were
14:24
treated as problems to be managed.
14:27
So when someone says they're killing Americans now, it
14:30
doesn't sound like an awakening. It sounds like a line being
14:33
crossed not because the violence became unjust, but because it
14:37
became inconvenient. It feels like a belated
14:40
recognition, like discovering a fire only once it reaches the
14:43
room that you assumed was fireproof.
14:46
And for those of us who have lived with the smoke for
14:48
generations, that distinction matters.
14:53
Remember, James Baldwin warned that a society that allows some
14:57
people to be destroyed cannot contain the forces it unleashes.
15:01
Violence cannot and does not stay neatly assigned to its
15:06
original targets. And the United States Indigenous
15:10
nations were the first testing ground.
15:13
The government declared Native people were savages, denied
15:16
their sovereignty and used military force, forced removal,
15:21
starvation and mass killing as policy.
15:24
The Trail of Tears was a legally sanctioned ethnic cleansing.
15:28
Wounded Knee was a massacre. Residential schools abducted
15:33
children to erase language, culture and identity.
15:36
Reservations were enforced through continued military
15:39
violence. The lesson was clear.
15:42
Some lives could be erased for the so-called greater good.
15:46
That logic was refined and expanded through slavery.
15:49
Enslaved Africans were considered property.
15:51
Violence was legalized, regulated, and it became
15:54
economic. Punishment was public and
15:56
instructional design, not just to control people, but to
15:59
terrorize entire communities into submission.
16:03
Slave patrols are the direct ancestors of modern policing and
16:07
they were created to capture escaped and free Black people,
16:10
enforce racial hierarchy, and maintain order through fear.
16:14
When slavery ended, the violence didn't.
16:17
It was just rebranded black codes, convict leasing, Jim
16:20
Crow, lynching. Through social control, the lie
16:23
became necessary. Black people said to themselves,
16:26
if we're free, then this violence must be justified.
16:30
That guy must have done something to deserve it, and the
16:33
same machinery just kept chugging forward.
16:36
Native Hawaiians saw their sovereign government overthrown
16:38
in 1893, their land seized and U.S.
16:41
Marines occupying their homeland, reframing it as
16:44
annexation. Chinese immigrants built the
16:47
railroads that connected our nation, thousands dying in the
16:50
process, only to be repaid with the Chinese Exclusion Act, the
16:53
first law to ban immigration based on race.
16:57
During World War 2 / 120,000 Japanese Americans were
17:00
imprisoned in internment camps. No charges, no evidence, no due
17:04
process, just collective suspicion they might be
17:08
dangerous. After Jim Crow ended, the
17:11
violence pivoted again. Mexican Americans were lynched.
17:14
In 1954, Operation Wetback deported over 1,000,000 people,
17:19
many of whom were U.S. citizens, branding the Latino identity
17:24
itself as illegal after 911 Muslim people, Arab people, and
17:30
South Asian communities were subjected to surveillance
17:32
without warrants, detention without charges, deportation
17:35
without evidence, entire communities positioned as
17:40
threats. And here's the part that people
17:42
miss. For many groups, this violence
17:44
comes in waves during war, panic, or crisis.
17:47
But for Black Americans, it's never really ended.
17:51
Policing, incarceration, surveillance and lethal force
17:54
have become permanent domestic applications of the same logic
18:00
first used against Native Americans and enslaved Africans.
18:04
That's why when people say they're killing Americans now,
18:07
what Black people here is You weren't the Americans we met.
18:11
Because the formula has always been consistent.
18:15
Dehumanize the group, label them dangerous, suspend their rights.
18:20
Call it necessary, forget it later.
18:24
The targets change, the script doesn't.
18:26
And James Baldwin warned us, if a society permits 1 portion of
18:30
its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then very soon no one
18:35
in that society is safe. What we are witnessing right now
18:38
is not a breakdown or a deviation.
18:41
It is the bill coming due, the logical outcome of a system that
18:45
has been excusing itself for over 400 years.
18:49
A system that has rotted institutions, brutalized
18:52
language, and hollowed out the public consciousness.
18:58
What we are witnessing is not a string of isolated tragedies.
19:02
It's a governing philosophy being exercised in real time.
19:06
The lie no longer whispers. It legislates.
19:09
It campaigns. It trends state violence is no
19:13
longer treated as a regrettable failure, but as a necessary
19:16
tool. Due process has been reframed as
19:19
an inconvenience. Empathy is now weakness.
19:22
Dissent is a threat. We are living in a political
19:26
climate where power is openly testing how much force it can
19:30
use, how many rights it can spend, how many people it can
19:35
discard before the word American loses all meaning.
19:40
And what makes this moment dangerous is not just who is
19:43
being harmed, it's just how many people are being asked to accept
19:48
it as normal, to see brutality as order, to see fear as
19:53
governance, to see disappearance as policy.
19:57
We were warned that once a society decides some lives must
20:03
justify the existence of others, it has already surrendered its
20:07
moral center. The bloodshed is only the
20:12
visible damage. The deeper devastation is what
20:15
happens when the public conscience goes quiet.
20:20
It is not a question of unity, it is a question of honesty.
20:23
Because a nation that only recognizes injustice once it
20:27
reaches certain people was never built on equal protection to
20:30
begin with. And a country that teaches its
20:32
citizens to look away or explain away will eventually find there
20:37
is nowhere left to stand that isn't soaked in the same logic.
20:42
My name is Brady Ransom, and this has been an alternate
20:45
episode of When Killers Get Caught.
20:47
No one should have to die to be recognized as human, and if that
20:52
idea feels radical in this country right now, that should
20:56
terrify us all.