Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2015

Excessive Force

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/23/us/sandra-bland-arrest-death-main/ Confession: Hearing the police officer's tone of voice when he commands Sandra Bland to " Get out of the car! " like she's a disobedient beast makes me sick to my stomach for many reasons. First, because it triggers visceral memories of my every encounter with a male authority figure who became enraged at not receiving immediate, unquestioning obeisance. Fortunately for me, none of my experiences were with legitimate law enforcement officers. Mine have been more similar in tone and attitude to Trayvon Martin's encounter with his killer where some self-appointed gatekeeper who passes judgment based purely on skin color and narrow-minded beliefs about what black people are and where our place is. Or like Jordan Davis's with his killer, who used a gun to punish a car full of young black men for having the audacity to defy him. (I'm not anti-gun; I'm anti-lunatics-with-guns whether the