It is odd how when I put it that way — blackness as a condition — that it does seem that I may in fact have a terminal illness.

The black theorist, sociologist and historian W. E. B. Du Bois was among the first to articulate for a wide audience the psychological jolt he felt as a child of realizing, after playing with a white child, that he was seen as a problem, and that his lot in life in America was to see himself as whites saw him, to acknowledge himself as a problem.

However, while I’m not a big fan of the idea that America has made a lot of progress since Du Bois’s time, I can readily admit that a lot has changed since the beginning of the 20th century. I imagine Mr. Crutcher and his desire to be back in a classroom and I think, how wonderful that is. I admire a person well into adulthood embracing the possibility that there are still things he’d like to learn, that he’d like to improve about himself, that he’d like to share with his family and the world.

The changes we’ve seen in the last century surely made it possible for Mr. Crutcher to conceive a plan of life and even to put it in action. But the lack of progress in the last century imperiled that plan. As democratic citizens we should be collectively aghast that a man could be fatally erased on an American highway by the agency sworn to protect and serve. The immediate reasons for his death may only ever be known to Officer Shelby. But anyone who has been keeping score at least since 2012 knows the problem Mr. Crutcher’s plan ran into: blackness in America. It caught up with him, and the outcome that, despite plans, many black Americans know is possible became very real.