“I’m just… Angry.” – Venting My Black Frustrations
I feel like Black America hasn’t been able to catch a break this week, and I genuinely feel so much anger and frustration that writing is the only healthy place for me to put all of this emotion. This piece is a loose string of thoughts on what’s been happening in the media as of late.
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I hate that I’ve become so desensitized to footage of my black brothers and sisters brutalized by the police.
I’ve noticed that when I see the video of the Kenosha officer acting as a one-man firing squad in killing Jacob Blake, and I no longer flinch in viewing such a tragedy. I unintentionally watched the body-cam footage of Daunte Wright’s murder in Minnesota, and I realized that I don’t get the same visceral reaction to such a sight like I once did. I wasn’t even fazed by the traumatizing clip of a scared Caron Nazario being pepper-sprayed by Windsor police. The fact that I’ve become so conditioned to watching such travesties makes me feel awful about myself; like I’m running out of my humanity.
I’m angry that after all the uproar and protesting we stirred up following the death of Jacob Blake, that it ended up being futile in bringing the murderous police officer to justice. In the Kenosha Police Department press release from the Chief of Police regarding said officer, he wrote: “He acted within the law and was consistent with training”.
Well, Chief Daniel Miskinis, if your officers are trained to shoot men in their backs not once, not twice, but SEVEN times, then quite obviously there’s an ISSUE with your police training. Jacob Blake was gunned down in the street like a dog and is now paralyzed, but just like the many cases before him, nobody will be facing any repercussions for their wrong doings.
I hate that I have to remember so many names in this fight for police and criminal justice reform. The many black police victims like Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Botham Jean, and Atatiana Jefferson (just to name a few) are practically ingrained into my memory at this point. I remember the specifics of each case, and the feeling I had in learning about these atrocities committed against them. So it gets so frustrating that every year, I continue to add to this mental rolodex of black trauma by the hands of police brutality, only to see less than 5% of these cases be closed with any sort of proper justice.
I’m frustrated that we are once again having the age-old conversation about “violent” protests. The cycle of tv media heavily publicizing the few instances of “rioting” and “looting” amidst protests, while simultaneously showcasing little about the excessive violence committed by riot squads and the national guard against protesters, simply continues. Those ‘on the ground’ condemn the law enforcement’s illegal chemical warfare against protesters, while the political elite again condemn rioting and don’t even attempt to understand the context of such actions. The irony of it all is that this cycle of property damage and political distrust would be avoided if the killing of innocent black people by the hands of police officers were to stop. Instead we see this take place again and again with law enforcement facing no consequences for their actions.
In just a 3 day span, we have seen the murder of Daunte Wright, the ongoing protests in Brooklyn Center, the footage of Caron Nazario, the news of no charges being brought against Jacob Blake’s killer, and of course, the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis. What’s most infuriating to me, of all these reasons I have to mad about, is that despite all of this news, life must continue to go on.
I didn’t personally know any of these black victims of police brutality, but all of these news stories affect me on a personal level because I know that these men look just like me. In a sense, I grieve these losses because I know that I could very well be just like them; a young innocent black man fallen victim to police violence.
However, we as black people don’t get excused time off for emotional stress in a time like this. I, as a college student, have to continue to attend classes and do school work like everything is fine. But I can’t just compartmentalize this and move on when I know that Daunte Wright will never have the ability to do the same. I can’t just sit in a class lecture and pay full attention right now when I know that nobody has been held accountable for Jacob Blake’s murder. I’m angry with every aspect of this broken criminal justice system, and especially with the politicians who continuously refuse to do anything about it.
This series of unfortunate news stories is very much traumatizing, whether we like to acknowledge it as such or not. So its hard for me to not walk around like an “Angry Black Man” right now.
But with these negative emotions, I’m also not going to let this defeat my spirit. If anything, I feel like a fire has been lit up under me again; the same fire I felt in 2016 when we lost Alton Sterling and Philando Castile in a two day span, and like most of us felt in June of 2020. I’m going to continue to do everything in my power to further the awareness of police brutality and issues across the spectrum of the criminal justice system.
I just had to get these feelings out. Now back to business.
