Not long after the first time I heard the of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, I knew this what 11 year old Naomi Wader said to be true.
In the first few months after Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors created the hashtag in response to the Trayvon Martin Verdict, I too assumed black men were the only ones being killed by police -- or at 99% of those being killed by police.
But Black Lives Matter movement refocused me, just like it did every one else.
In 2012 cop murderers, predominantly white, and their victims started becoming huge stories on first on social media, then on network news. The names of black women victims would only pop up occasionally on social media and therefore national news.
I didn't think much of it because I figured boys stay out in the street and go places alone a lot more. I figured boys do things that are more high risk from the jump. Black boys have always been the victims of more violence even when white police are not involved.
So I accepted the fact that I was going to have to strain black news for any word on black female victims of police. I didn't resent it, not that much anyway.
In addition to young black males being the victims of more violence, often from one another, black men are too often raised up in the black community as if they are the only ones that are black, the only ones suffering the truly damaging form of racism.
While that's outrageous, they are/were being shot more often by police.
So I sifted through the news, keeping a careful eye out for the deaths of black women at hands of police. I figured I hear about 1 black woman for every 5 or 6 black men (-- same as the ratio of women to men in prison for most races and most western countries) But somehow the number of black women I was heard about on black social media was much less.
As time went on, I began to notice something else about the black social media's raising up black victims of police
I'd hear about a black male victim the same day or the next day after he was killed on social media. I'd hear about him again and again, the story going viral again until large news outlets like ABC, NBC, New York Times, and the Washington Post picked up the story.
Another day or so after that the black male victim would be a household name, nationwide.
But black female victims? In 2013 and 2014 wouldn't hear about a black female victim of a police murderer until a couple of months had passed. And I only ever heard about the black female victim from another black woman on social media -- a feminist one more often than not.
Yvette Smith's story, for example, didn't get to be widespread news for months.
That is, her story was not repeated over and over on black social media immediately after she was shot.
Since Yvette Smith's story didn't rise up from black social media to make the national news, nobody was really digging into Yvette Smith's story.
All of this together is likely why most people still don't know Yvette's killer cop shot her using his own, personal, AR-15 until --the average, young, white, male mass shooter's murder weapon of choice. And I didn't find this out until a couple of years after Yvette died when I read the article below.
YVETTE SMITH'S COP KILLER SET FREE BY SANDRA BLAND JUDGE
http://thankherforsurviving.blogspot.com/2016/07/yvette-smiths-cop-killer-set-free-by.html
In the case of Rekia Boyd, I did hear about her death right away on black social media. And her story did make the national news. Yet, there was definitely an obvious lack of black interest in Rekia's death on social media as compared to Trayvon's death the month before.
There weren't nationwide protests for Rekia --even though she was actually shot by an off duty policeman, with an illegal gun, responding to a noise complaint.
Eventually, some black women were forced to come to a conclusion: Black women's deaths were being erased by the black community first and white mainstream media second.
to be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment