Perspective

When I see the two cops laughing after one of them gets shot because this is TV and one says while putting pressure on the wound, Haha, you're going to be fine, and the other says,I know, haha!, as the ambulance arrives— I know the men are white. I think of a clip from the hours of amateur footage I've seen when another man at an intersection gets shot, falls, and bleeds from a hole the viewer knows exists only by the way the dark red pools by the standing cop's feet, gun now holstered, who yells the audience back to the sidewalk. I know which one is dying while black and which one stands by white. I think this morning about the student in my class who wrote a free write line on the video I played that showed a man pouring water on his own chest, "...the homoerotic scene against a white sky" with no other men present.Who gets to see and who follows what scrip t? I ask my students. Whose lines are these and by what hand are they written?