Sandra Bland: In Memoriam
You are dead and this question burns: Why didn't you put out your cigarette?
When the leaves turned brown this year, you should have been starting a new job at Prairie View A&M. Let me rewind the Texas DPS dashcam footage and sit beside you in the passenger seat and tell you that it will be OK if you just do what this state trooper says. He's trying to maintain control because this is how he survives, but then you take another puff, turn away, and say: "You do not understand the muthafucker."
I know that some people will always see you first as a pigment unworthy to share society even inside graves and this is why you rage with this officer in your car as he threatens to "light you up" for disobeying the cigarette order as he pulls you from your car and you curse him and plead to understand the charges for not using your turn signal to allow his squad car with flashing lights to pass you, and then as he and the female officer stay atop you in handcuffs, or later, in your jail cell, we will never know the truth because black lives matter but they do not, yet. We have all failed “to serve and to protect (except when we fucking feel like it)” as the punchline epitaph.
The grand jury says that there is not enough evidence for murder in your jail cell and you commit suicide so that this incident will always be your fault? Go ahead, oppressors. Tell her what you think: "That uppity got what she deserved."
Let her swing like strange fruit as we gather past Christmas.
This year, my husband and I went to the casino in Opelousas, LA, to gamble and attend a friend's wedding in the most self-segregated town I have seen with whites and blacks living separate within about a main-street mile with the black or white church services held each within one block from the other. Another friend and former resident tried to prepare us before we went that it would be this way since there are people who have never been anywhere else so "this normal is all they have ever known." What I have learned this year is that this unspoken normal is ours no matter where we live in the United States.
At the casino around midnight, we check in to our first-floor room beside the indoor pool and these narrow halls are filled with at least 50 hotel guests whom will not make eye contact with us except through bland indifference, except one teenage woman, perhaps with Sandra's fleeting rage that, in an instant, was directed at me as I, a white woman, would dare laugh with her as her friend playfully shoves her from behind toward me. In silence, we speak primal misunderstandings from fear and distrust: Talk to me or attack, bitch, and this enrages and frightens me but I do understand.
If I could talk to you now, it would be to listen. Let us promise each other again, as with Martin Luther King, to understand each other through the content of our characters rather than our skin; and, when we misjudge, be willing to listen and to take non-violent action at all times.
Racism survives because we refuse to call out the muthafucker even when a white woman thinks affirmative action is unfair because she is denied admittance to UT. Somehow, white lives should matter more than black lives because, through racism, we whites must keep our privilege and power. It's this primal and non-sensical fear that keeps us loving guns more than our neighbors.
One hope for society is a nationwide effort to continue implementing "community policing"; or, the idea, like at UT and other colleges and universities, where officers are well trained as police and also to show compassion toward the entire community. This will not prevent racism but it shines a light into darkness when we need both.
The alternative is to let Sandra die and we the people do hereby absolve responsibility for this foolish martyr who curses police for our YouTube views. We see you and let you die.
When the leaves turned brown this year, you should have been starting a new job at Prairie View A&M. Let me rewind the Texas DPS dashcam footage and sit beside you in the passenger seat and tell you that it will be OK if you just do what this state trooper says. He's trying to maintain control because this is how he survives, but then you take another puff, turn away, and say: "You do not understand the muthafucker."
I know that some people will always see you first as a pigment unworthy to share society even inside graves and this is why you rage with this officer in your car as he threatens to "light you up" for disobeying the cigarette order as he pulls you from your car and you curse him and plead to understand the charges for not using your turn signal to allow his squad car with flashing lights to pass you, and then as he and the female officer stay atop you in handcuffs, or later, in your jail cell, we will never know the truth because black lives matter but they do not, yet. We have all failed “to serve and to protect (except when we fucking feel like it)” as the punchline epitaph.
The grand jury says that there is not enough evidence for murder in your jail cell and you commit suicide so that this incident will always be your fault? Go ahead, oppressors. Tell her what you think: "That uppity got what she deserved."
Let her swing like strange fruit as we gather past Christmas.
This year, my husband and I went to the casino in Opelousas, LA, to gamble and attend a friend's wedding in the most self-segregated town I have seen with whites and blacks living separate within about a main-street mile with the black or white church services held each within one block from the other. Another friend and former resident tried to prepare us before we went that it would be this way since there are people who have never been anywhere else so "this normal is all they have ever known." What I have learned this year is that this unspoken normal is ours no matter where we live in the United States.
At the casino around midnight, we check in to our first-floor room beside the indoor pool and these narrow halls are filled with at least 50 hotel guests whom will not make eye contact with us except through bland indifference, except one teenage woman, perhaps with Sandra's fleeting rage that, in an instant, was directed at me as I, a white woman, would dare laugh with her as her friend playfully shoves her from behind toward me. In silence, we speak primal misunderstandings from fear and distrust: Talk to me or attack, bitch, and this enrages and frightens me but I do understand.
If I could talk to you now, it would be to listen. Let us promise each other again, as with Martin Luther King, to understand each other through the content of our characters rather than our skin; and, when we misjudge, be willing to listen and to take non-violent action at all times.
Racism survives because we refuse to call out the muthafucker even when a white woman thinks affirmative action is unfair because she is denied admittance to UT. Somehow, white lives should matter more than black lives because, through racism, we whites must keep our privilege and power. It's this primal and non-sensical fear that keeps us loving guns more than our neighbors.
One hope for society is a nationwide effort to continue implementing "community policing"; or, the idea, like at UT and other colleges and universities, where officers are well trained as police and also to show compassion toward the entire community. This will not prevent racism but it shines a light into darkness when we need both.
The alternative is to let Sandra die and we the people do hereby absolve responsibility for this foolish martyr who curses police for our YouTube views. We see you and let you die.
