Black People Don’t Deserve to Die Like This

We wake up, again on a new-normal Monday in August to hear that another black person--Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin--was shot in the back by a police officer as his children looked on. We are devastated and heartbroken.  He is clinging to life, and his body is broken, possibly beyond repair.

Our minds race to categorize, to explain, to understand this unrelenting assault.  I am reminded of what George Floyd’s brother, Philonise, said when he found words to talk about his brother’s murder.  He said, “He wasn’t hurting anyone that day. He didn’t deserve to die over twenty dollars...Enough is enough…”  He held on to hope, “If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain.”  

These were wonderful and courageous words from a heartbroken brother.  But, I think we have to say out loud—Black people don’t deserve to die because white people need a lesson in humanity. Black people don’t deserve to die because they resist arrest. Black people don’t deserve to die over twenty dollars.

Black people don’t deserve to die because they committed a crime.  Black people don’t deserve to die because your shop windows are broken.  Black people don’t deserve to die because Target was ransacked.  Black people don’t deserve to die because you’re afraid of them or you don’t like them.  Black people don’t deserve to die because they hate you, or because you hate them. 

Black people don’t deserve to die because of that one time you and your friend were walking down the street and a black guy… and then, he....and then you saw...and you did not know….And, anyway, he smoked weed.

Black people don’t deserve to die because you feel guilty and paralyzed.  Black people don’t deserve to die because you are “not racist.” Black people don’t deserve to die because they don’t have a mentor or a scholarship or a big brother or a computer.

Black people don’t deserve to die because they can’t make bail.  Black people don’t deserve to die because they are high or drunk or wrong, or because you don’t want them in your neighborhood or in your schools.  Black people don’t deserve to die  because they are from Chicago or “out of town.”

Black people don’t deserve to die because they can’t afford blood pressure pills, or because there’s no doctor, or the doctor doesn’t know; the nurse doesn’t understand; the emergency intake was overwhelmed, or the practitioner doesn’t recognize her implicit bias.

Black people don’t deserve to die first and disproportionately because you don’t care about the air they breathe, the water they drink, or the food they eat. 

Black people don’t deserve to die because white people once believed they could own black bodies and have since built a whole system on that foundation.  Black people don’t deserve to die because you don’t like how Black people react to being killed.

Black people don’t deserve to die because they demand their right to vote.

Black people don’t deserve this.  It is morally and spiritually wrong.  And we all know it.

Jacquelyn L. Boggess is a Director of the nINA Collective as well as a Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin School of Social Work. She is based in Madison, WI.