When Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrice Cullors founded the Black Lives Matter movement, their intention was to talk about the ways that all black lives are routinely denied basic human rights and dignity and the role of state violence in anti-black racism. It is fitting that this movement was founded by black queer women—women who no doubt understand the ways in which the voices of marginalized groups (women, LGBTQ, disabled, undocumented etc.) have been historically left out of conversations on racial justice and black liberation. In fact, they were purposeful in explicitly centering those groups in the hopes of building a more inclusive and modern black liberation movement.
Yet, for many, Black Lives Matter has somehow become synonymous with addressing state violence against black men while women are left out of the discussion altogether. Black women are centered in the conversation insofar as they are portrayed as mourning mothers, partners or relatives of slain black men but not positioned as victims of violence themselves. This is completely inaccurate. Black women are killed in disproportionate numbers by the police. While we represent only 13 percent of the female population, we account for 33 percent of all women shot to death by police.
On Sunday, one of those women named Charleena Lyles, was shot and killed by police in Seattle. She was just 30 years old:
Just after 10 a.m. Sunday, Seattle police responded after the woman had called to report an attempted burglary at her Magnuson Park apartment. At some point, police said, she displayed a knife and two officers shot and killed her. [...]
Family members said she was several months pregnant and had been struggling with mental-health issues for the past year. They said she was concerned authorities would take her children, one of whom they said has Down syndrome.
Lyles had actually called the police to her home that morning to report an attempted burglary. There were three children in her apartment at the time that police shot her—ages 11, 4, and a one-year-old.
This was not her first encounter with the cops. She had been arrested earlier in the month when officers responded to a call because she had armed herself with scissors to protect herself against her boyfriend. Records indicate that she was booked on charges of harassment and obstruction of a public official. Her family claims that one the conditions of her release was that she seek mental-health counseling. One important fact worth noting here is that the Seattle police have a documented history of excessive force and biased policing.
The Seattle Police Department has been under a federal consent decree since 2012 after a Department of Justice investigation found its officers routinely engaged in excessive use of force, most often against people with mental or substance abuse problems. Federal investigators also found evidence of biased policing.
Recently, a federal court-appointed monitor found encouraging signs that the department had made significant progress in its reforms.
Both officers involved were white. But they need not be for us to understand the ways that state violence and white supremacy interacted to take Charleena Lyles’ life. A black woman calls the police for help. She had been arrested before so they already have her labelled as a “risk.” She had been struggling with mental health issues. She also has children living with her. We don’t know what happened when she came to the door. But is it necessary for both officers to fire multiple rounds into a woman with a knife? While endangering the lives of her children at the same time? Let’s talk about how white folks do far, far worse, like go into churches and murder black parishioners, and yet somehow come out into custody unscathed. This is a well-documented pattern.
Too many officers see black people as a threat and automatically shoot to kill—armed or not, with children or not, with mental illness or not, male or female. Many of these departments have been investigated by the Justice Department and have agreed to correct their practices. Under Jeff Sessions, who does not believe in consent decrees, it’s likely that this will never happen. This is what it means to say that black lives matter. It’s because to the state and white supremacy, they do not. The state does everything it can to allow police killing of black lives to go unchecked and unaccounted for. And it is critically important to understand that those lives are not just male.
Including Black women and girls in this discourse sends the powerful message that indeed all Black lives matter. If our collective outrage around cases of police violence is meant to serve as a warning to the state that its agents cannot kill without consequence, our silence around the cases of Black women and girls sends the message that certain deaths do not merit repercussions.
The Say Her Name campaign has been working since 2015 to raise awareness of the stories of black women who are killed by police in order to broaden the discussion about state violence against black lives and who is impacted. Additionally, the conversation includes considering race and gender in policy initiatives to address police violence and ending sexual abuse and harassment by police officers. To learn more, click here. Charleena Lyles—yet another black victim of state violence. Her story will not make the news like Philando Castile. Or Oscar Grant. Or Freddie Gray. This is why it is so important to #SayHerName.