Responsibility
By: Ariana Aboulafia
It is June 20,2017.
Yesterday, the news broke that the officer who killed Philando Castile — a man who was pulled over for a broken taillight in Minnesota, with his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds in the front seat and his four-year-old daughter in the backseat — was found not guilty of manslaughter.
I, like so many others, had already seen one video of Castile’s horrifying death. Reynolds had broadcasted the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook Live, and that recording had gone viral some months ago. In this video, you can see Castile bleeding while Reynolds begs Jesus for him to stay alive, while the cop still points a presumably loaded gun through the open window at Castile’s dying form. After some time, more officers arrive on the scene, and demand that Reynolds exit the vehicle; after she does, she is arrested (although for what, exactly, is unclear). Even in the back of the police car, she continues talking to the camera, begging for prayers from whoever is watching, hopelessly hoping that Castile is not dead.
He was already, at that point, or he soon would be. He died, and the officer who killed him — Officer Jeronimo Yanez — will not spend a single day in jail. And so, today, Castile’s name joins the ranks of all of the people of color, mostly black men, who have been murdered by police officers in very recent memory. Eric Gardener. Michael Brown. Alton Sterling. Tamir Rice.
So many more. God, why are there so many more?
It is June 20, 2017, and I am saddened but not surprised that another person of color has been killed, and that his killer will not be held responsible. It is June 20, 2017, and I am no more surprised at the acquittal of Officer Yanez than I am at the murder of 17-year-old Muslim girl Nabra Hassanen, or the fact that police are saying that that murder was motivated by “road rage” and not by religious hatred.
In a dashcam video, released today, one is able to see the murder of Philando Castile from a different angle. Officer Yanez pulls Castile over for his broken taillight, and Castile calmly tells the officer that he has a firearm in the car. Yanez tells Castile not to reach for his firearm. Castile replies that he is not — presumably, then he reaches for something (Reynolds, in her video, stated multiple times that he was reaching for his license, as had been requested by the Yanez) and Yanez opens fire on Castile, shooting him multiple times at point-blank range.
I was always taught to respect police officers. I grew up in New York, after 9/11, where I saw men and women bravely give their lives to save innocent businessmen and women, some of whom were commuters like my father, that had been victims of the attack. A man that I love very much, who I call “uncle,” is a police officer with the NYPD. All of these videos, all of these articles that I see and read — they go against everything that I’ve ever known, that I’ve ever been taught to know about police officers.
I was always taught that you called police when you were afraid. So, tell me why, now, it is the presence of police themselves that fills me with fear?
In 2015, at a Halloween party in San Francisco, a police officer found me sitting outside of a house with four friends, waiting for an Uber back to our hotel. He singled me out — maybe because I had the darkest skin, maybe because I was the smallest or because I was sitting down and he wanted to be able to easily intimidate me. Whatever the case, he immediately began to question me and asked me who lived in the house where the party was, which had caused a noise complaint.
I respectfully told the officer that I didn’t know whose party it was — which was the truth. The officer grew irate, yelling in my face, cursing at me, and placing his hand onto his holster — all because I didn’t know whose party I had been at that night, and because he didn’t believe me.
I got lucky that night. The officer’s partner convinced him to back down, my Uber arrived, and I walked away from the encounter unscathed. But I wondered then, and I wonder now: if I were a man, if I had even darker skin, if I had been wearing a hoodie… what would have happened to me?
Philando Castille was killed over a broken taillight. What’s the difference between that and a noise complaint?
There are so, so many good police officers. But there are also so many real, institutional and systemic issues in our country that are reflected in our police departments and their practices. And, because of those issues — that few, if any,police departments are willing to address — as a minority woman, I am afraid to call the police.
And, I don’t think that I have met many, if any, members of any minority classes that don’t feel the exact same way that I do.
My wife is a lovely, sweet twenty-five year old woman with a fierce temper. It is June 20, 2017, and I am thanking God that she does not look like me or like Diamond Reynolds, that she has blonde hair and light skin, because what if she didn’t? What if her temper were combined with a dark skin tone and a minority sexuality — would she live to see her twenty-sixth birthday?
It seems to me, sometimes, that having a temper, that having the ability even to be aggressive or just assertive, to stand up for your constitutional rights, is turning into a privilege in this country. Because over and over again, when something like this happens, I read Facebook comments that I should not read, I read Facebook comments that say that clearly, the victim was somehow at fault. He moved when he shouldn’t have, he spoke too loudly or too disrespectfully, he blinked too fast, he reached too soon. Philando Castile followed all of the rules, and yet he wound up dead anyway, because the truth of the matter is that whether we live or die has nothing to do with the things that we say or do and everything to do with the way that we look.
There is a photograph of Officer Yanez circulating on Twitter, that was purportedly taken a few moments or hours after he killed Philando Castile. In the picture, Yanez is wearing his police uniform and a bracelet that says “Police Lives Matter.”
Police lives do matter. But, bracelets do not need to be created that say this, because everyone is taught from the time that they are children, babies even, that police lives matter, that police are heroes. It is June 20, 2017, and the reason that we still need to say that black lives matter is because what seems to be a majority of our society does not believe that they do. From the same time that we are taught that police are heroes to be revered, we are taught that black people, particularly black men, are “thugs” to be feared. Just the fact that saying “black lives matter” is controversial in any way speaks volumes as to the complete and utter lack of value that our society places on black lives.
Black lives matter. Black lives matter, black lives matter, black lives matter.
I will say it, I will write it, I will echo the sounds of the protestors who I stand with, figuratively if not literally, in solidarity. But, no matter how many times I say it, no matter how many times people that are so much more important than me say it and write it, those who truly need to see it, to hear it, to believe it, will not. That’s the power of institutionalized racism, and until it is addressed, I fear that what happened to Philando Castile will just keep happening, over and over again.
While studying queer politics at USC in 2016, I was assigned readings by two queer of color theorists (E. Patrick Johnson and Cathy J. Cohen) that both asserted that it was vital for queer activists to align themselves with causes that affect all minorities in order to become more effective and useful to all queer people, as opposed to simply serving the needs of white, gay men. Put simply, Cohen and Johnson believed that a better queer politics was one where queer people do not simply march in gay pride parades, but show up in equal numbers to protest the defunding of Planned Parenthood; one where queer people do not simply speak out against gay-bashings, but also against the police brutality of young black men.
I strongly believe that it is the role of all minorities to join together and stand behind the black community until something changes, until it is no longer legally and morally acceptable in any way for a police officer to murder a black man just because he has been conditioned to fear them. Officer Yanez will not be held responsible for Philado Castile’s murder. The white, male majority will not hold itself responsible for its despicable actions, from pussy-grabbing to outright murder. It is up to minority populations to do that, and we will only be able to do that if we are able to somehow find commonality in all of our differences and stand together in the face of our oppressors.
It is June 20, 2017, and I am finally sick of repeated acquittals, of constant lack of responsibility. Yanez is responsible. You are responsible. I am responsible. These deaths are on our collective consciences, and their blood stains our collective hands.
It is June 20, 2017, we are all responsible for these reprehensible things that keep on happening. And, it’s about damn time that we all start acting like it.
