Sandra Bland: Beware the day they change their mind!

Negroes,/Sweet and docile,/Meek, humble and kind:

Beware the day/They change their mind!

Wind/In the cotton fields, Gentle Breeze:

Beware the hour/It uproots trees!

— Warning!, by Langston Hughes

You ever want to disappear? Not just when you were twelve and going through puberty (which, by the way, can be very difficult but is often rooted in embarrassment). But because the world is such a shit place and you’re left questioning everything? That kind of disappearance. I felt like that back in July. If you’ll recall, there were at least three Black women killed the same week that Sandra Bland was killed:

There were three deaths, but the more I read about Sandra Bland’s case, the sicker I got. after the McKinney incident I had decided that I would not watch anymore videos of modern day lynchings or near-lynchings. But then new footage was released, footage that I did not watch. But then that familiar mugshot was released. The one where it’s unclear whether she is dead or alive. Scrolling through tumblr I found it and had to stop browsing immediately. I think that was the first time that I truly learned the necessity of social media breaks:

I came back online, only to realize that sometimes even Black folks like to shove post-mortem media violence down your throat:

But regardless of social media breaks, the murder of Sandra Bland had broken something inside of me. No amount of self-care could fix the loss of a sister who I never knew. I felt a special connection to her because I was in Chicago at the time and she was from Chicago; she vaguely resembled my mom; she basically predicted her own death in a video of hers. Her death made me question my own role as an activist and what the results of different actions were. I kept asking myself: what can a protest do? So like I said, I broke down. I was at the lowest, most depressed state I have ever been in my life after months of stolen Black lives and the disgustingly cruel case of Sandra Bland. Below is a portion of a series of tweets I wrote about battling depression, particularly addressing effect that the media around Sandra Bland had on me:

And as I sit here and write this, hours after the news from the Texas grand jury of “no indictment” in the murder of Sandra Bland, I feel empty. I’m not just empty, though, I’m hungry to action to stop these attacks on Black life. I feel a bit like I did in June after the Charleston Massacre. June was okay, but back in July I had broken down. I wanted to be gone. In August I was still mourning. Today I still feel a lot like this:

I’m not angry, I’m not crying, and I’m not surprised. I’m halfway between empty and full. Spiritually and emotionally drained, but intellectually ready to figure out what comes next.

There is a 2017 trial date set for Sandra Bland’s wrongful death, but Justice is slow. In fact, Justice is something Black people are unfamiliar with; Justice and Black people have never been properly acquainted. Acquaintances must first be introduced, and a system built on the simultaneous dehumanization and exclusion of Black people is a system that will never produce Justice for Black people. We’ve seen Justice, we’ve even heard our friends ask us: “you still haven’t met Justice?” Yet somehow Black people and Justice just keep missing each other. I gotta be honest with you, I know Justice has been avoiding us. We’re searching, but Justice stays runnin’. So the best bet is to move on for the time being.

For now I will keep fighting to divest from prisons so that our humanity isn’t reduced to disproportionately targeted bodies utilized for a profit. For now I will keep in touch with high school students terrorized for their Black skin to aid them however I can. For now I will keep speaking about the bullshit we have to deal with at historically white institutions.

Each day is a new day. Each new modern-day lynching removes one soldier from our family while fortifying the masses. Whether it is reform or revolution, we are shaping the present and building the future with our actions.

The best bet is for us to keep doing us, but I can tell you this much: sweet and docile negroes we ain’t.