Anita Chabria: A Black guard shot a Black man for shoplifting. Blame San Francisco's legacy of racism
Last month, a Black man raised in chaos and scarcity shot and killed a Black man living in chaos and scarcity on the sidewalk in front of a downtown Walgreens.
It was a dispute over the alleged shoplifting of $14 worth of snacks and a Sprite.
Since then, the killing of Banko Brown, 24, by security guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, 33, has incited protests, blame and frustration in this troubled city, where chaos and scarcity are as common as the political divisions they breed.
On Thursday, one of San Francisco's great civil rights leaders, the Rev. Amos Brown (no relation to Banko Brown), will preside over the funeral, expected to draw hundreds, at the church where the slain man once attended Sunday school.
For the pastor, the answer to why Banko Brown is dead — the bigger context — is obvious: racism. For all of San Francisco's liberal legacy, for all of the political success of leaders including Willie Brown and Mayor London Breed, he told me, it has long been one of the hardest places in California for Black people to thrive — a reality that in recent years, but
