m of people like Kass — a mainstream columnist for a major American newspaper suggesting that Black people should live under a martial law that would surely be unacceptable for his own family or his own children. …ded — have perhaps never made it past the bar of being three-fifths human in the eyes of the state. In moments of optimism where I come close to doubting this truth, I am assailed by reminders in the form of people like Kass — a mainstream columnist for a major American newspaper suggesting that Black people should live under a martial law that would surely be unacceptable for his own family or his own children. Solutions like this presume blackness and Black people through a lens devoid of human empathy — a hollow void which precludes all else.