Secoreia Turner, a little Black girl, is dead, and I don’t know what to do.
I was going to write some thinkpiece thing, but it’s not important what I think. I also don’t have nearly enough understanding of what the balance is between community activism and warlording is down at that Wendy’s about 20 miles from my house.
I just know a Black girl is dead, and Black people killed her. And I don’t know what to do about that.
I’m not about the myth of Black-on-Black crime. Looking at intraracial crime in a mostly segregated society is meaningless, especially if we refuse to include ongoing pressures from systems or economic injustice.
But I’m upset and enraged at the careless and unfocused show of force in the zone around the Wendy’s. I know people feel hopeless, and they feel like they haven’t had control over anything in their lives. I know having guns and fists, the latter of which were used against my Black friend who was trying to do what independent journalists do and learn more about what was happening at the source, make them feel powerful. I know Rayshard Brooks grabbed that taser and ran (and probably went and got drunk in the first place) because he felt like he was trapped in a corner and there was no way out. I know the killers probably feel the same.
The entire point of Black Lives Matter, though, is to be far more radical than Black supremacy, or even mere Black power. It’s to imagine a world that is not perfect, but greets struggle with mutuality and joy. It’s to imagine a radically inclusive world that creates space for people to find and be their truest selves. It’s imagining a world where the old systems of dominance are not necessary, because we center family, blood or bound, and protect children.
The people in the zone didn’t protect Secoreia Turner. And now we all reap the whirlwind, and blow away another piece of the dream.
Secoreia Turner is dead, and I don’t know what to do.
Reforged 