Further consider that there’s no note and I don’t think we have evidence of him being suicidal. People do kill themselves without notes and people do hide their depression, but how many times do we say “well, all these things that are consistent with a lynching are possible in a suicide” before occam’s razor forces us to accept that it being a lynching is a much more reasonable conclusion?
Was there any evidence, even retrospectively, of suicidality or a mental health crisis leading up to his death? Did something awful happen to him or a loved one? did he express being depressed even indirectly? Does this being a suicide make sense to the people close to him?
Black men sometimes get lynched with no real antecedent in their own lives (e.g. they may have no real connection to the killers), but no one deliberately kills themselves without antecedent. There is no neutrality here; if there’s an overall absence of evidence, that leans unambiguously toward it being a lynching.
Further consider that there’s no note and I don’t think we have evidence of him being suicidal. People do kill themselves without notes and people do hide their depression, but how many times do we say “well, all these things that are consistent with a lynching are possible in a suicide” before occam’s razor forces us to accept that it being a lynching is a much more reasonable conclusion?
Was there any evidence, even retrospectively, of suicidality or a mental health crisis leading up to his death? Did something awful happen to him or a loved one? did he express being depressed even indirectly? Does this being a suicide make sense to the people close to him?
Black men sometimes get lynched with no real antecedent in their own lives (e.g. they may have no real connection to the killers), but no one deliberately kills themselves without antecedent. There is no neutrality here; if there’s an overall absence of evidence, that leans unambiguously toward it being a lynching.