Firefighters are people too, bad fucking people says Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates weaves words of power that touch on the oft ignored threat posed to the black body by America's firefighters

"We arrived two months before September 11, 2001.....I suppose everyone who was in New York that day has a story. Here is mine: That evening, I stood on the roof of an apartment building with your mother, your aunt Chana, and her boyfriend, Jamal. So we were there on the roof, talking and taking in the sight—great plumes of smoke covered Manhattan Island. Everyone knew someone who knew someone who was missing. But looking out upon the ruins of America, my heart was cold...
I could see no difference between the officer who killed Prince Jones and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were the menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could—with no justification—shatter my body."

The plumes of smoke and dust produced by the collapse of the twin towers may have obscured Ta-Nehisi Coates view of the horizon, but they did not obscure from him, not for one solitary second, the essential inhumanity and evil of America's firefighters.