Another black human is dead. A person. A friend. A sibling. Someone’s child. Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when officers knocked on her door around midnight. According to her boyfriend, when asked to identify themselves, they did not. And now she is dead, along with George Floyd, Janet Wilson, Dijon Kizzee, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, as well as countless others in a history of police violence against black Americans.
The gruesome knee to the throat of George Floyd will not be forgotten quickly. Or will it? In 2014, Eric Garner suffered a similar fate after being choked out. Janet Wilson was shot multiple times. Officer Matthew Kinne was not on duty when he shot his mistress, 32 year old Dominique Clayton, and mother of four, in the head. Her eight year old son discovered her body. Fox News reported that Dijon Kizzee was shot multiple times. Fox reported that “Kizzee, 29, was fatally shot after deputies attempted to stop him for an alleged bicycle violation. The department has not said what that violation was.”
Dijon Kizzee, 29, was fatally shot after deputies attempted to stop him for an alleged bicycle violation.
Fox News
Tamir Rice, a 12 year old, was shot playing in a park next to his house. He had a toy gun, which, admittedly, did look like a real gun. But it wasn’t a real gun. It was a toy. He was a 12-year-old boy playing in the park. He was shot just once.
Some say Breonna Taylor was not asleep in her bed. Correct. At the time she was shot, she was in her hallway, as she had gotten out of bed when the police entered her apartment. As per the New York Times: “Law enforcement officers kill about 1,000 people a year across the United States. Since the beginning of 2005, 121 officers have been arrested on charges of murder or manslaughter in on-duty killings, according to data compiled by Philip M. Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Of the 95 officers whose cases have concluded, 44 were convicted, but often on a lesser charge, he said.”
New York Times
This watering down of charges is clearly seen in the Breonna Taylor case. On Wednesday, September 23, the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s shooting were not charged. According to the Hill, a “Kentucky grand jury on Wednesday did not bring any charges against police officers in the killing of Breonna Taylor, and instead announced three lesser counts of wanton endangerment against Louisville police officer Brett Hankison.” Brionna Taylor, however, was shot 6 times.
There is more…
While the men in the above video were legally armed, as was Brionna Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, that is certainly not the case for so many others. In fact, a large number of black men who are shot by police officers are unarmed. This is true. They are shot anyway. Kevin Jackson, in “The Black Sphere” writes–dramatically–about the discrepancy between black and white deaths committed by police officers per year:
“Unarmed blacks killed per year: 47. Non-blacks: 105.”
The Black Sphere
Here’s the problem with Jackson’s “shocking” contrast of the deaths of unarmed black people (usually men). While, yes, 47 is absolutely a smaller number than 105, the percentage of black people in this country is only 13-14%. The number of unarmed black people killed by police officers (47) doesn’t seem so small when you look at it that way, does it? Deaths of unarmed black people constitute more than half of police killings of unarmed black humans. More than half.
Arguing in a similar fashion to Jackson, in 2018, police shot and killed 54 unarmed men; and “only” 22 were black, writes Charles Love in an opinion piece. Love goes on to justify those shootings by pointing out that black men are more likely to commit violent crimes. The dangerous part of Love’s argument is that he links two unrelated points (the numbers of victims murdered by police with the violent crime tidbit). He conveniently skips the part where the men shot and killed in the 2018 statistic were unarmed. By linking the two, he also distracts from–and distorts–the facts. “Only” 22 were black. Unarmed. Not committing a violent crime.
Black people represented 24% of those killed by police in 2019, despite making up only 13% of the U.S. population.
Reuters
Reuters Fact Check shows us that: “Fatal shootings by police in the U.S. have shown that while more white people than black people are killed by police overall, black people are killed at higher rates relative to population size. According to The Washington Post, “Although half of the people shot and killed by police are white, black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate.” Blacks are “killed by police at more than twice the rate of white Americans.” So, yes, statistics can lie. If it looks like police kill more white people than black people, they do. But police also kill black people at nearly twice the rate. When an unarmed Dominique Taylor was shot in the head by her alleged lover, police officer Matthew Kinne, she was unarmed, too. Tragically, Breonna Taylor, is just one more of a long list of unarmed black people killed by the police.
The now well-known Eric Garner was killed in 2014 by a police officer, Officer Panteleo. Garner, like George Floyd, said repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.” The officer continued the chokehold, ultimately resulting in Garner’s death. A medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide. In spite of this fact, Officer Panteleo remained a police offer until he was finally fired in 2019, five years after Garner’s death! Not until five years after Garner’s death was Panteleo finally removed from the police force. Garner, however, is still dead.
It is important for me to remind people that the protests following Eric Garner’s murder, George Floyd’s murder, the failure of the justice system to charge the officers involved in Breonna Taylor’s death, and so on and so on, have been highly publicized, highly emotional, and yes, sometimes violent. All of these protests, any of them, come from a place that is so deep, so heart-breakingly visceral to the people speaking out, chanting, shouting and even screaming. And, no, protests are not only to protest the injustice of Breonna Taylor’s murder, or Tamir Rice, George Floyd, Eric Garner, and, sadly, too many others to name. The numerous protests following these numerous cases (and others) stem from a very long, very painful history. Evil.
I would argue that, yes, are rooted in a horrific history of slavery that goes well beyond comprehension. But the pain of these protests is from all of it. Centuries old. Not only slavery. Not only Jim Crow. Not only institutionalized racism, borne and bred into every fiber and structure of our country. Not only a lack of rights for all Americans. Not just black disenfranchisement, which continues to this day. No, this pain is bigger than any one piece of those enormous, incomprehensible, complex pieces of our country’s history…and our present. For whites, it is our white shame, the countless wrongs that have been committed against African Americans–for centuries. For African Americans, the horrific pain is being on the receiving end of all of those countless wrongs, over and over and over…with no end in sight. This pain, simmering for so long, too long. To ignore, or to discount the deep pain of African Americans is unforgivable. To not see it, not even recognize–or not even try–is, quite simply, wrong. For our country, and for all of our citizens–to not recognize the justifiable anger, even fury, of black Americans after so much pain is a grave error. So much pain. So deep. So long. The multiple cases of police brutality, abuse, and, ultimately, murder are horrific, but they are real. While protests may not always be peaceful, the pain behind them is real. The grief is also real.
