Copy Paste Remix #4: “Who Gets a Name?: Keith Porter, Renee Good, and the Politics of Public Memory

This essay examines the racialized dynamics of media attention, public memory, and movement co-optation through a comparative analysis of two recent killings by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The deaths of Keith Porter Jr., a Black man killed in Los Angeles in December 2025, and Renee Nicole Good, a white woman killed in Minneapolis one week later, reveal stark disparities in visibility, narrative framing, and national response. While both cases raise serious questions about state violence and accountability, only one rapidly entered the national consciousness through widespread media coverage, political response, and formal documentation. Drawing on the historical aims of movements such as Say Her Name and Black Lives Matter, the essay argues that the uneven recognition of these deaths reflects broader structures of racial inequality that determine whose lives are publicly mourned and whose remain obscured. The analysis highlights how symbolic justice movements risk dilution when attention is redirected toward already visible narratives, reinforcing rather than disrupting racial hierarchies of grief, legitimacy, and remembrance.

—Telisa Nyoka King, M.A.