America’s contract to protect white woman has always been tenuous | Saida Grundy

ICE's killing of Renee Good has revealed how the state will only defend those who uphold a white racial order. A 1915 film points to the origins of this social pact

In the hours after the 7 January fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis mother of three, gut-wrenching footage of her killing was released, discrediting initial claims from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the Department of Justice that she was shot in self-defense. As a response to the public outcry, the Trump administration and a chorus of conservative public figures unleashed a litany of dehumanizing and defamatory remarks about Good, a beloved wife, neighbor and dental assistant, in ways that were unduly callous.

The Fox News host Jesse Watters derided Good's queer identity, and mocked her as a self-proclaimed poet from Colorado with pronouns in her bio". The homeland security secretary Kristi Noem vilified Good as a domestic terrorist who weaponized" her vehicle in an attempt to run over officers - a patently false comment. Laura Loomer, a personal adviser to the president, posted to social media, She deserved it ... I'm shocked her lesbian girlfriend wasn't shot with her." JD Vance lobbed the biting accusation that the victim was a deranged leftist", before adding that it's a tragedy of her own making". Donald Trump justified the shooting, telling reporters that at a very minimum, that woman was very, very disrespectful to law enforcement". And on 17 January, the justice department announced a criminal investigation into claims tying her grieving widow, Becca Good, to unnamed activist groups" (six federal prosecutors resigned in objection to the investigation).