On April 4, an unarmed Black man named Patrick Lyoya was killed by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, after being pulled over for having mismatched license plates; a white officer shot him in the back of his head. On April 17, Syracuse police aggressively detained a Black boy, just 8 years old, after he allegedly stole a bag of chips. The next day, police in upstate New York tackled a young Black boy with autism (ironically during Autism Acceptance Month) for no clear reason as he stood in line at Target.
As I scroll through social media, I keep wondering: Where are all of the staunch opposers of violence? Where are the people who claimed to be allies, who swore their allegiance to support Black Americans after the police murder of George Floyd? We still need that level of outrage directed toward the disproportionate violence Black people experience in the United States on a regular basis.
It is now well-documented that Black people are punished more harshly than white people under the law, and that they undergo disproportionate violence at the hands of the police. Black individuals with disabilities, like the 14-year-old thrown to the ground in Target, are more likely to be harmed by the police than their white counterparts.
The media certainly plays a role in this racism. White mass shooters, it’s been found, are more likely to have sympathetic descriptors than Black ones. Black boys as young as preschoolers are more likely to be watched by their teachers for bad behavior than white boys. Black children are more likely to be suspended in schools for the same behaviors as white children and six times more likely to be shot by the police.
None of this is surprising if you know the history of policing in the United States. Police forces in this country were originally created as slave patrols — a joint force between slaveowners and white supremacy groups. Their purpose was to nab runaway slaves. Police have remained a symbol of violence and death to Black Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow to present day.
A recent survey showed that individuals’ views of the police differ significantly based on race. White Americans were more likely to trust the police than Black Americans. Is it any wonder?
Some might argue that, since Lyoya was struggling with a police officer, the use of force was warranted. Even still, did the police officer have to shoot him in the head? Were there no other options to de-escalate the situation?
And it’s unclear whether Lyoya was struggling in the first place because he was attempting to harm the police officer or because he feared for his life. Given the rampant police brutality directed toward Black Americans, it is plausible that Lyoya might have felt the need to physically defend himself.
And what about Black children who are aggressively detained by police? There is no justification for throwing a child with autism to the ground or holding an 8-year-old to the point of tears for allegedly stealing chips. These scenarios are what racism and white supremacy look like.
Black Americans need continued anti-violence support from the wider community. We still need your op-eds, your protests and your public outrage in the face of excessive, unwarranted violence. We need the collective public to demand accountability when it comes to police brutality.
We need you to keep the same energy you had when you first declared yourself an ally, and we need it now. Black Americans are still fighting. Stand with us.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Amanda J. Calhoun is an adult/child psychiatry resident at Yale Child Study Center/Yale School of Medicine and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project at Yale University. This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, which is run by The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.
