THE LOST SONS OF OMAHA

Carefully written account of a tragic encounter during a Black Lives Matter protest.

Nebraska is a deep-red state, Omaha a purplish blue. While the city has made efforts to address racial inequalities, it has much still to do. As veteran journalist and debut author Sexton observes, in the demonstrations following George Floyd’s death, Omaha police were involved in more than 120 “use of force” encounters with protestors. In one zone of demonstration, a young Black man confronted a business owner and was shot to death. Instantly, as Sexton shows, a war of words ensued on social media, with White nationalists declaring that the deceased was a thug and worse and the left proclaiming that the bar owner was a racist, Nazi, and more. The story is a complex one at every turn, and the author handles it well. The business owner was a Marine veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who ran a tight ship, including enforcing a dress code in his bar that some believed was discriminatory against young Black men; the deceased was a sometime patron with a long history of legal troubles. Yet that story was immediately simplified in the hands of ideologues. As Sexton writes, “a narrative was taking hold, and it gained momentum at extraordinary speed.” One fomenter of the narrative that the bar owner was a racist with an itchy trigger finger later admitted to Sexton that he had no evidence. However, having bombarded social media with allegations, he “could not have been prouder of his efforts.” He was far from alone, and although Omaha police did not bring charges, a prosecutor conducted a heavily politicized inquiry. Sexton does exemplary journalistic work not just in digging up the facts and interviewing family members and eyewitnesses, but also in exposing how the whirlwind of opinionating works against finding the truth on all sides.

A well-reported, somber, troubling look at crime and punishment without justice.