Guns, Racism, and Respectability Politics

Reflections on the shooting of Ralph Yarl

Two black and white T-shirts reading “Black Lives Matter”. On one of the shirts, the letters in the slogan are made out of the names of Black victims. Photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 4.0.

The recent shooting of Black teen Ralph Yarl for the crime of ringing a white man’s doorbell has captured a large amount of media attention in the U.S. Yarl, who was seriously injured, has received over three million dollars in contributions to a fundraiser for his recovery, and got a phone call from President Joe Biden…