I Don’t Think We’re Really Understanding What Breonna Taylor’s Murder Signifies

Pissed is not the word to describe what I feel. I was going to compile a list of Black Women who’ve been murdered by police — because the media tends to only focus Black Men — but I can’t wait to finish compiling that list to express my disdain for America.

If you don’t know, Breonna Taylor was an EMT who was shot eight times in her home during a drug raid. Neither she nor her husband were targets of the raid because the police already had the suspect they were looking for in custody. But the police still went to her home, not wearing police uniforms, unannounced, under a ‘no-knock’ search warrant issued by a judge, and proceeded to kick her door in.

Thinking they were being robbed, Breonna’s boyfriend fired a shot, hitting what we now know to be a police officer, and the cops blindly fired 20 shots into the apartment, killing Breonna. They arrested and charged her boyfriend with assault and attempted murder of a police officer.

Do I have to elaborate on the grossness of the situation? Not to mention her murder happened TWO MONTHS before the Ahmaud Arbery shooting?

I can’t stand this country. You’re telling me that even during a period where tens of thousands of people are dying from a mysterious virus; unemployment is higher than it’s been in years; White people are going crazy because they can’t access the services usually provided to them by poor Black and Brown people; and the White House hasn’t an inkling of how to begin to fix the situation; Black people have to continue worrying about being senselessly murdered?

Breonna’s murder is indicative of what we all seem to forget until another harmless Black person is murdered with no hesitation: this country does not value Black people outside of what we can produce for white people.

If we have seen no other indication that this was true in our lives, take this country’s haste to reopen without any protective measures for service workers as that indication. Take Breonna’s murder and her boyfriend’s punishment for protecting them as that indication. Take all of the Black lives, which we won’t ever get an accurate measure of, that were murdered by police between 2016 and now, that did not make national news, as that indication.

We are being killed off. If it’s not due to the job insecurity, under-resourcing of our communities, inadequate healthcare services, incompetent and inequitable public school systems, and/or the school-to-prison pipeline, and police massacres that we faced pre-covid, it’s due to the heightened effects of each one of those during a national emergency and the continued indifference to these issues by the country.

It becomes more of a problem when I see everyone and their mother that’s not Black taking parts of Black culture and wearing it like a costume for social status, profiting off of it while the Black community continues to suffer. They recognize everything we do and have except our humanity.

I refuse to be silent about the disappointment and disgrace that America is just because everyone is facing uncomfortable times. When I say ‘America’ I’m not only talking about the government. I’m talking about every single American who sits idly by and watches the Black Community suffer while simultaneously partaking in our societal contributions. I’m talking about ‘POCs’ who can wear locs and say ‘nigga’ but not speak up when Black people are being discriminated against. I’m talking about Asians who buy property in the hood but then disrespect the same people they’re looking to profit off of. I’m talking about LatinX people who look for Black people to support them in their efforts for equal rights, but are anti-black, turning a blind eye to the anti-blackness embedded in their culture. And don’t get me started on all the pOcS on TikTok pretending to pick cotton and joke about slavery.

America is the most ass-backwards country in the world. I understand why people hate us. Growing up, I was taught in school that other countries hated America out of jealousy. I now understand they hate us because we’re outstandingly corrupt, we don’t respect basic human rights, and don’t try to better our faults — all while boasting about being the land of the free and the American Dream! I have to laugh.

I hope Breonna is Resting in Power. And I hope that we come out of this quarantine more aware than ever of the state of Black people in this country. They don’t care about us and they never will.

We have to turn our resources and energy inwards. We have to buy property in the communities we grew up in so we can have institutions and establishments built for us and by us. This reckoning is well overdue.

Love and Light,

Azé