In March Stephon Clark, an unarmed Black man, was shot 8 times in his grandmother’s backyard in Sacramento, CA becoming the latest in a line of Black men killed at the hands of law enforcement. Four years ago, the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO set off a wave of protests as the vulnerable lived reality of Blacks is live-streamed to those who are becoming keenly aware of the realities of police brutality in the twenty-first century. In the years in between, we have seen the uprisings in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray; the emergence of the discussion of women’s murders in response to Sandra Bland’s and Korryn Gaines death; and have been repeatedly and traumatically exposed to the daily assaults on the lives of Blacks who are assaulted and harassed while standing by an elevator, visiting a friend, or playing in their grandmother’s backyard.
We as a society have truly reached an all-time low. After every injustice at the hands of police brutality, we witness the rally cries of communities as they continue to struggle and protest the war on Black bodies that seems to be waged throughout the United States. Many demonstrations (although peaceful), have been filled with sadness, anger, rage and disappointment toward an institution that was supposedly designed to ‘protect and serve’ its citizens. Who is considered a citizen worthy of social justice and the protection of human rights and who is not is abundantly clear. No longer content to light a candle and move on after another Black life is taken too soon, Black Americans are motivated to address the issue of perpetual extrajudicial killings of young Black men in this country. Black mothers, wives, aunts, girlfriends, sisters are tired of burying Black men. Black men are fed up with having to teach the next generation how to avoid problems from law enforcement when walking down the street. Everyone is tired of dealing with the systematic racism, which has led to the disenfranchisement of countless individuals and allows racial profiling practices to exist leading to the sociocultural, psychological, and physical wounds of so many disenfranchised communities.
Several organizations are trying to heal those wounds by providing greatly needed first-aid to the numerous communities plagued by the repeated soliloquy of race based structured inequality, violence and victimization. For example, Dream Defenders – a national organization dedicated to building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress communities, came up with 6 national demands and 7 policy solutions which include making avoidable shootings of unarmed citizens a federal offense and mandatory immediate investigations of such shootings by unbiased third parties. Systemic public policies such as these are important because they speak to a history of injustice where Black Americans have been subjected to systematic genocide dating back for decades, if not centuries highlighting the fact that the situation is larger than Ferguson, bigger than Baltimore and requires more than a one-day implicit bias training. According to CDC cause-of-death data, between 1968 and 2011, a Black person was 4.2 times more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than whites. Consider the following names of people killed by police during those four decades – Philando Castille, Eric Garner, Aiyana Jones, Wendell Allen, Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Emmett Till and countless others who appear on section D of our local newspapers (if at all).
The recent murder of Stephon Clark illustrates the continued existence of race based structural inequality and highlights a terrifying reality for the myriad of disenfranchised communities struggling to cope with the grief and loss that coincides with homicide violence and victimization. The impact of homicide violence and victimization not only fragments the individual and collective belief system of survivors of homicide victims but also ultimately shapes how survivors of homicide victims make meaning of the homicide, how the world operates and how safety and order are actualized for communities of color. To paraphrase Goldie Taylor, the scab is off the festering sore. It is time to provide first aid to the infection and not just cover it up with a bandage.
Our communities need to be allowed the right to breathe freely and safely without fear of repercussions for our existence. The untold damage, which has been inflicted for generations, needs to be repaired. People are asking ‘when will the protests end?’ The protests can only end when true healing begins. They can end when we actually begin to address the chronic infection of systematic racism. They will end when we begin to dismantle the system, starting with injustices in law enforcement practice. Until then, protests like those begun in Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD, Sacramento, CA and all of the disenfranchised communities throughout the United States will continue.
We as a society have truly reached an all-time low. After every injustice at the hands of police brutality, we witness the rally cries of communities as they continue to struggle and protest the war on Black bodies that seems to be waged throughout the United States. Many demonstrations (although peaceful), have been filled with sadness, anger, rage and disappointment toward an institution that was supposedly designed to ‘protect and serve’ its citizens. Who is considered a citizen worthy of social justice and the protection of human rights and who is not is abundantly clear. No longer content to light a candle and move on after another Black life is taken too soon, Black Americans are motivated to address the issue of perpetual extrajudicial killings of young Black men in this country. Black mothers, wives, aunts, girlfriends, sisters are tired of burying Black men. Black men are fed up with having to teach the next generation how to avoid problems from law enforcement when walking down the street. Everyone is tired of dealing with the systematic racism, which has led to the disenfranchisement of countless individuals and allows racial profiling practices to exist leading to the sociocultural, psychological, and physical wounds of so many disenfranchised communities.
Several organizations are trying to heal those wounds by providing greatly needed first-aid to the numerous communities plagued by the repeated soliloquy of race based structured inequality, violence and victimization. For example, Dream Defenders – a national organization dedicated to building alternative systems and organizing to disrupt the structures that oppress communities, came up with 6 national demands and 7 policy solutions which include making avoidable shootings of unarmed citizens a federal offense and mandatory immediate investigations of such shootings by unbiased third parties. Systemic public policies such as these are important because they speak to a history of injustice where Black Americans have been subjected to systematic genocide dating back for decades, if not centuries highlighting the fact that the situation is larger than Ferguson, bigger than Baltimore and requires more than a one-day implicit bias training. According to CDC cause-of-death data, between 1968 and 2011, a Black person was 4.2 times more likely to die at the hands of law enforcement than whites. Consider the following names of people killed by police during those four decades – Philando Castille, Eric Garner, Aiyana Jones, Wendell Allen, Oscar Grant, Rekia Boyd, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Emmett Till and countless others who appear on section D of our local newspapers (if at all).
The recent murder of Stephon Clark illustrates the continued existence of race based structural inequality and highlights a terrifying reality for the myriad of disenfranchised communities struggling to cope with the grief and loss that coincides with homicide violence and victimization. The impact of homicide violence and victimization not only fragments the individual and collective belief system of survivors of homicide victims but also ultimately shapes how survivors of homicide victims make meaning of the homicide, how the world operates and how safety and order are actualized for communities of color. To paraphrase Goldie Taylor, the scab is off the festering sore. It is time to provide first aid to the infection and not just cover it up with a bandage.
Our communities need to be allowed the right to breathe freely and safely without fear of repercussions for our existence. The untold damage, which has been inflicted for generations, needs to be repaired. People are asking ‘when will the protests end?’ The protests can only end when true healing begins. They can end when we actually begin to address the chronic infection of systematic racism. They will end when we begin to dismantle the system, starting with injustices in law enforcement practice. Until then, protests like those begun in Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD, Sacramento, CA and all of the disenfranchised communities throughout the United States will continue.