The nuclear clock’s still ticking and arms-trading is fuelling a suicidal race. There are a lot of things to fear in the world today. I’d like to suggest that African American women be taken off that list.
Not long ago, I had a chance to hear from relatives of Black women killed at the hands of police. In more than half of the cases, those who ended up dying, were in need of help not violence. And yet the killer, an armed police officer, justified his acts on the basis that he feared for his life.
Michelle Cusseaux’s mother Frances, said she called her daughter’s mental health facility to check on Michelle who lived alone and seemed in crisis. Instead of help, came cops, and one sergeant in particular who decided to shoot the 5.5 and 130 pounds Michelle in the heart because, he said, he felt threatened, by “the look on her face.”
Another of the women killed, a transgender woman called Kayla Moore, was acting oddly and talking to herself, when her roommates called for mental health assistance. Instead of help came multiple police who decided to isolate, restrain and attempt to arrest Kayla, a large woman, by sitting on her. She ultimately suffocated to death.
What did the arresting officer say? That Kayla was “seemingly violent”.
The stories of Cusseau and Moore and others, are written up in a new report from the African American Policy Forum. “The fact that black women are rarely viewed as women in distress” is literally costing them their lives, the authors write.
Instead of in need, black women, even when they’re experiencing a mental health crisis, are perceived as posing a deadly threat. Such is the power of stereotype.
Meanwhile, what about the war-mongers, bomb-sellers and weapons hawkers . They scare me half to death. Do you think, if I shot one to the heart, I’d get away with saying I was frightened?
There’s “seemingly violent” and then there’s all this death.
You can watch an interview with Dr. Helen Caldicott, anti-nuclear campaigner extraordinaire, this week on The Laura Flanders Show on KCET/LINKtv and TeleSUR and find all my interviews and reports at GRITtv.org. To tell me what you think, write to: Laura@GRITtv.org.
