Tyre Nichols was beaten to death, and justice has been denied once again for a Black man in America. This isn’t just about a failed system—it’s a deliberate choice by that system to preserve the same racist, violent structures that Malcolm X fought against. His fight against state-sanctioned terror is alive in our fight today because nothing has changed. Nothing.

Let’s make this clear: Tyre Nichols was murdered. Not "wronged." Not "mishandled." Murdered—by a system that constantly shifts blame, plays legal gymnastics, and devalues Black life at every turn. These officers aren’t held responsible for his death because the system isn’t built to hold anyone responsible for killing a Black man. It’s built to protect those who enforce the status quo of Black death and Black pain.

This verdict is a slap in the face to Nichols’ family, to Black communities, and to every Black person in this country who lives knowing they’re walking targets. How many times have we heard this same story? How many more will it take before we acknowledge that these verdicts are not anomalies? They are part of a pattern. A pattern of state violence that goes unchecked because it is embedded into the very fabric of America’s so-called justice system.

This is not justice. This is the continuation of a war against Black people in America—a war that began with the shackles of slavery and continues today with the shackles of systemic racism. Tyre Nichols’ death is just one more bloody page in a history book stained with Black bodies, but the ink hasn’t dried because we are still living this nightmare.

Malcolm X said it best:

"I’m not a politician, not even a student of politics; in fact, I’m not a student of much of anything. I’m not a Democrat. I’m not a Republican, and I don’t even consider myself an American. If you and I were Americans, there’d be no problem. Those Honkies that just got off the boat, they’re already Americans; Polacks are already Americans; the Italian refugees are already Americans. Everything that came out of Europe, every blue-eyed thing, is already an American. And as long as you and I have been over here, we aren’t Americans yet." — Message to the Grassroots, 1963

How can you call this justice when the law was written by people who never even considered Black people to be fully human in the first place? This isn’t justice, this is the ugly face of America—an America where Black lives still don’t matter unless they can be exploited, sold, or destroyed without consequence.

This is where we are: another Black man dead, another cop free, and another reminder that this country is as comfortable with Black suffering as it is with breathing. The verdict doesn’t just let these cops off the hook; it’s a message to every Black person in America that your life still doesn’t matter.

It’s clear that the system wants us to feel defeated, to be numb, to accept this as normal. But we won’t. We’ll call it what it is: a modern-day lynching. This wasn’t some isolated incident—this is America doing what it’s always done. Killing us.

No more watered-down language. No more excuses. No more pretending that reforms or body cams or diversity training will save us. This is about power. This is about a system that chooses to protect its agents of brutality because its very existence depends on their violence.

Tyre Nichols deserved to live. And justice demands not just convictions, but the dismantling of the entire system that allows this brutality to go unpunished, over and over again. Anything less is complicity.