the color of law
A Short Essay on Police Violence, Black Hashtags, and Mental Health in the [ Crying ] Black Community
The ricochet of bullets into Philando Castile’ s chest will probably remain with Diamond Reynolds and their four-year-old daughter forever.“ It’ s ok, I’ m right here with you” are the words of a black child comforting her mother in an unimaginable moment. The mothers of Alton Sterling, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland, and so many others [ will experience the trauma that afflicts black women ] who must deal with the loss of their children. The children of Alton Sterling will have to navigate the world in remembrance of their father’ s violent death as it replays throughout the digital world.
Unfortunately, the death of black folks at the hands of the police has become an all too familiar phenomenon. With this, comes the emotional aftermath of black death that has become normative in the black community. Policing and surveillance in black and brown communities has been a contentious issue since the birth of this nation. State-sanctioned violence has periodically accompanied the sociopolitical landscape of the black experience. Historical stereotypes of blackness have created a festering narrative of black male criminality and deviancy among black females.
BY ITANÉ COLEMAN
Regardless of their actions, many black people live in a state of fear and mistrust that parallels the state of terror experienced in the antebellum South. As a result, we see a generational pain and frustration that plagues the black community and our subsequent struggle for equity and freedom. Throughout history, black and brown bodies have been subjected to assault in a number of dehumanizing ways. The white supremacist devaluation of black and brownness, as well as the susceptibility of our bodies to its ongoing violence contributed to the construction of the # B l a c k L i v e s M a t t e r m o v e m e n t. T h e # BlackLivesMatter movement epitomizes a life-time of frustration and a yearn for liberation within the black community. Although a hashtag on social media, black lives matter has been the rhetoric of the black community since emancipation. We have fought strategically for years to gain recognition as not only citizens, but as humans in this country.
Our advocacy with # BlackLivesMatter should not end with police brutality. The discourse of this movement is crucial in spaces that extend to education, policing, well-paying jobs, etc. # BlackLivesMatter allows us to consider what is at stake when black and brown people are systematically murdered and d i s p r o p o r t i o n a t e l y t a rg e t e d f o r t h e implementation of violence in its many forms. The notion that black lives matter does not convey that other lives do not. Like many other movements relating to blackness and black liberation, the Black Lives Matter movement has been reduced to a hate group that promotes