Breonna Taylor a tipping point for Black women
Racist white men love invading Black women’s personal spaces. At least it seems that way. They treat us like we’re insignificant, and then bulldoze their way into our native countries, our cities, our neighborhoods, our streets, our homes and our bodies without criminal consequence.
Perhaps the white man’s feelings of entitlement to the Black woman’s personal space comes from the centuries of slavery when a white man could violate any Black woman within his reach and suffer no consequences. Perhaps these are the “great” days that our president longs for. Let’s not forget that he’s been accused of violating women at least 26 times.
In March, white police officers invaded Breonna Taylor’s home and shot and killed her. On Wednesday, a grand jury decided that the two Louisville police officers who murdered her will be free to move around their Kentucky communities like it never happened.
Every time I see Breonna’s photo, I see myself. She could have been me. I could have been her.
Breonna was a 26-year-old Black, college-educated, ambitious woman. When I was her age, I was working my first fulltime job as a reporter for the Record-Journal in Meriden, and I was a full-time graduate student studying journalism at Quinnipiac University. I was living in my first solo apartment. It was a cute little one-bedroom in West Haven. I had a boyfriend at the time who lived 45 minutes away, and he sometimes spent the night at my house when he didn’t feel like driving all of the way back home.
Breonna’s boyfriend was spending the night at her place when police officers botched a raid on her apartment.
I’ve imagined myself in Breonna’s situation. I’ve imagined laying in bed next to my boyfriend laughing and talking, and then suddenly the police are knocking down my door, firing bullets through my apartment and through my body. In this scenario that I’ve imagined, I’ve done nothing wrong, like Breonna. I wasn’t really in the wrong place at the wrong time because I was home, where I should have been, just like she was.
Breonna didn’t deserve to be murdered. The cowards that murdered her don’t deserve to be living outside of a prison cell. The city of Louisville will pay Breonna’s family $12 million as part of a settlement for the botched raid, but that is not justice. Her life was worth more than that money. Her mother lost her daughter. As a mother of two, I would much rather have my sons here with me than $12 million.
White people, just a few months ago you were horrified when you watched Minneapolis police officers strangle George Floyd for eight minutes and 46 seconds. After seeing that video, you swore that Black lives mattered. You quickly drafted statements about equality and social justice. You hired Black people and called them chief diversity officers. You created new confusing catch phrases to describe Black people, like “BIPOC” (Black Indigenous People of Color). You wanted to know what books you could read to learn about racism. You were studying systems of white supremacy and wanted every Black person you knew to tell you how you contributed to those systems. Now, an innocent Black woman has been killed in her home, and you’re silent. Getting justice for Breonna Taylor was your pop quiz, and you have failed.
Black people have been pleading for justice for some time now, and we’re not getting it. We are tired, but a Black person’s fatigue mixed with anger and centuries of oppression is a deadly eruption just waiting to happen. There is going to come a time when Black people start shooting back, fighting back and strangling back. If we face the possibility of being killed without consequence, why wouldn’t we fight back?
The world will become as equally dangerous for white people as it is for Black people ... if not more. White people have been bullying Black people for
400 years. We’ve been taking some major blows this year. Now Black women are livid. We are also well-educated, strategic, organized, financially literate and ready to obliterate anyone or anything that stands in the way of our freedom and safety.
A severe storm is coming. Consider this your weather advisory.
Stacy Graham-Hunt is a national-award winning columnist and author, who writes about race and identity. She is passionate about Black people telling their own stories. Email her at stacygrahamhunt@gmail.com or follow her on social media @stacyreports.