Mr. James Baldwin was an oracle for Black folk — and white folk too if they’d but pay attention.

"According to Sheriff Beth, young Black men are to be considered as predators or threats, and they must be subdued. It is telling that Sheriff Beth spoke these bellicose words in front of a microphone nearly two years ago.”

What is most telling to me and in line with your story is that — in 1996, as she supported her husband’s passage of The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, of 1994, sponsored by none other than then Senator, Joseph R. Biden, Hillary Clinton also uttered the same bolded word you quoted above (with the word, “super” preceding it for effect, I guess) adding, …we can talk about how they ended up that way but first, we have to bring them to heel.” (I was living in Charleston when proudly — THIS happened):

Like Sheriff Beth, in front of a microphone, 24 years later — at a COLLEGE no less, Killary’s telling her audience of YOUNG MINDS what becomes indelible, shaping them as sure as the lynching shaped “deputy sheriff Jesse’s viciousness toward Blacks years later.” Yes, the white terror state again, and always, is still all around us, which is why as you said, “Generation to generation, the history keeps coming back, often in a more lethal way.”

Baldwin said it was so.” And it is, what it is…