Melanin can’t commit homicide. Skin pigment can’t pull triggers and take lives. So tell us Barbara and Karen Fields:

Skin color cannot, in fact, cause a club to land, a gun to discharge, or a Taser to electrocute, any more than skin color can deny a job application or bank loan or locate a highway or toxic waste dump near a residential area. The “because” in each instance is not the victim’s skin color but a deliberate action by one or more human aggressors.

It is a mistake, they contend, to look for an explanation of Philando Castile’s death in the color of his skin. “The point is this,” they continue: “skin color has no capacity to act, either for good or for ill.”