Why weren't Ahmaud Arbery's killers arrested and prosecuted promptly? They lied about what happened, and officials treated those lies as a reason to leave them alone.

Why did the video change this? This article argues that the video made Americans recognize Arbery's humanity.

That may be true, but it did something else as well. It made the falsehood of the lies so obvious that even officials who tried to endorse them couldn't defend them.

Some of us know that thugs lie, that a strained claim made by a thug is not to be trusted. We respond, "Oh, don't give me that rubbish!" But people with right-wing values bend over backwards to believe thugs. (That is what enables thugs to get away with "testilying", as they call it.)

Dehumanizing blacks can be part of why they do so.