The Movement For Black Lives Must Include Black Women
Until we as a society are outraged about the murder of ALL Black people, we are no closer to building a just future
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“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” — Zora Neale Hurston
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or willfully keeping your eyes closed, you’re already well aware of the issues plaguing Black America in this moment. From the high number of Black Covid-19 deaths to the latest round of open season on Black life and an endorsement from 45 to shoot those rebelling against the injustice of it all, it’s an understatement to say that Black folks are exhausted right now.
We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, and many of us watching from home are wondering what we can do to unsuck the world. Because many states are still under stay-at-home orders, much of what we can do is limited to social media activism. While browsing my social media feeds, I’ve noticed a trend: Everyone is outraged about the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, but outside of Louisville, the outrage about the murder of Breonna Taylor seems to exist almost exclusively among Black women.
Breonna’s murderers have yet to be arrested, and I wonder whether that is because we are not as collectively outraged for her as we have been for Ahmaud and George.
Breonna’s story has gotten very little attention in the media after Louisville Metro Police officers burst into her home and shot her while she was asleep in her bed during the wee hours of the morning on March 13. Her story briefly trended nationally around May 13 but has been just a blip on the radar in sustained national coverage. There was some momentum as people fought against her boyfriend’s arrest after he was charged for defending his family against the police officers he thought were home invaders. The attention to bringing Breonna’s murderers to justice, however, seemed to wane once it was announced that the charges against her boyfriend would be dropped.
