Missing racial relevance

Dan Wakefield's editorial, "Why Are We Still Reliving the Nightmarish Death of Emmett Till?" completely misses the point: Emmett Till's death is no longer relevant, and we should all thank God for this.

As Wakefield describes it:

In August 1955, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago was tortured and killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman. His body was found in the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Less than one month later the two white men responsible were found “not guilty” by an all-white jury in Sumner, Mississippi.

Keep in mind, this incident was basically two racists acting outside the law, performing murder, and then allowed to get away with it by an equally racist jury. While this isn't necessarily impossible today, it is far less likely, to the point of being unheard of today.

But then Wakefield draws his faulty parallel:

If anything, we seem to have regressed. As police shootings of black men have become more commonplace (or at least more unignorable, since citizens carry cameras on their phones), we have to be reminded that “black lives matter,” and even that simple truth can be regarded as “controversial,” countered with shouts of “All lives matter,” a team cheer for the newly empowered white nationalists. 

How many differences can we draw?

1. Emmett Till wasn't killed by police.
2. Of the black men killed by police today, most were justified. All led to investigations. Many are still ongoing. All of the incidents, regardless of police guilt or innocence, created bad PR for the police.
3. Many of the modern police shootings led to black community protests and riots immediately afterwards. During Till's time, the black community was far too scared to attempt anything like a protest (although there were unfounded rumors of riots). 

If anything, Emmett Till's murder trial is almost the inverse of the O.J. Simpson 1994-95 murder trial.

In 1955, white racism was commonplace, and a strong part of the culture. In 2016, the mainstream media screams against every single slight aimed at a black person, even if it is deserved. If there is any parallel at all, it is the inverse: White people have to walk on glass around blacks, for fear of being called the "R" word. If you get labelled as a "racist", you become an instant cultural pariah, even for the most minor offense, and even if it wasn't intended.

In 1955, white people could get away with murdering a black. In 2016, if a cop shoots a black man, regardless of what the black man was doing, the cop will receive the "tar and feather" treatment from the media, followed quickly by mass protests and a few riots.

Anyone who tries to draw parallels between Till and today's black hoodlums is doing a severe injustice to the memory of Emmett Till. Till made an innocent mistake and paid the ultimate price for it. Today, when a hoodlum, black or white, gets killed for ignoring police authority (which is usually the cause of "death by cop"), one can complain about over-aggressive policing, but it is rarely because of skin color, in spite of the fact the media likes to play that up. Racism sells, probably because it is far more rare than the media would lead you to believe.