What if Black lives came with a price tag that couldn’t be ignored – not by the government, not by police, not by the racists hiding in plain sight?

I’m talking about life insurance. Not just a personal safety net, but a tool of collective power. Because in America, money talks – and insurance companies are some of the loudest voices in the room.

Imagine this: every time a Black person is unjustly harmed or killed by the police, their life insurance pays out. And not just to their family, but through massive claims that hit the insurance companies’ bottom lines. How long do you think it would take before those companies started lobbying for police reform? Days? Hours?

Insurance giants don’t wait for justice. They sue cities. They sue departments. They lobby lawmakers. If payouts became the cost of police brutality, you’d see body cams on every officer, stricter hiring standards, real accountability, and a sudden end to the “paid vacation” officers receive for unaliving someone.

How many officers would still be on the force if every wrongful death triggered a lawsuit backed by billion-dollar insurers? How many departments could even afford to keep bad cops on payroll when their actions come with multi-million-dollar consequences? That “administrative leave” might start looking a lot like a firing – and less like a reward, with a bent-badge.

And it doesn’t stop there.

Let racially motivated violence come with a price tag. Let the murderers’ families face civil suits from powerful insurance legal teams. Let the hate groups watch their inheritances vanish in settlements. Hate isn’t so cheap when it’s insured against.

Then watch how quickly white terrorism gets called by its name – not just in the media, but in federal law – when insurance money stops flowing to campaigns that ignore it. Watch political tides shift when PACs lose funding because corporate liability becomes political liability.

Meanwhile, our families wouldn’t have to beg the internet to bury their loved ones or to print the next round of R.I.P. t-shirts. There’d be money to mourn – and money to fight.

This is about economic resistance. Assurance, not just insurance. A system where protecting Black lives becomes profitable. Where accountability isn’t optional – it’s contractual.

It won’t fix everything. But it would change the calculus.

Because if we can’t convince this country to value Black lives morally, maybe we can make it too expensive not to.

Maybe then we can actually live instead of waiting on MLK’s Dream.

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