By Sikivu Hutchinson
“I can’t breathe”. These words, now reverberating
across the world in gruesome playback, were among the last uttered by George
Floyd, a devoted
son, friend, and father, as he lay dying under the knee of a killer cop this
week in Minneapolis.
According to his friends, Floyd was a “quiet personality
and (a) beautiful spirit” who had moved to Minneapolis in search of a “new life”.
I began writing this piece prior to his death. It
began as a reflection on the fragile state of Black girls’ mental health in the
pandemic. I kept thinking about the irony of May being Mental Health Awareness month in an era
when many of us might feel we are drowning, slowly going insane with rage.
For at least the third time in a month, Black people
have heard and seen another Black person repeatedly executed on camera. We have
grieved collectively with the families of the victims, written, protested in the streets,
called for the prosecution and jailing of killer cops, and wondered if it will
take armed resistance to change this seemingly endless death regime. These atrocities
are unique to Breathing while Black in America, where the 24/7 corporate news
cycle and state violence intersect in a toxic anti-blackness that inflicts deep
psychic and emotional wounds.
Covid-fueled increases in surveillance, suppression,
and lynching have become indelible signs of the rise of a twenty first century
Confederacy. Over the past few weeks alone, Black folks have been treated to
the spectacle of whites storming state capitols demanding re-openings; whites refusing to wear masks; whites refusing to socially
distance, and whites saying a collective ‘fuck you’ to public health, screaming
about having their rights violated by the government as police stand idly by. These
“don’t tread on me” outbursts stand in stark contrast to the escalation in
targeting of African Americans in public by the NYPD and LAPD, as well as with the
recent terrorist murders of Breeona Taylor in Kentucky, Ahmaud Arbery in
Georgia, and George Floyd. Taylor was
killed while asleep in her bed. Arbery was gunned down in broad daylight on a
jog. Floyd was slain face down on the ground while telling the officer who killed
him that he was going to die. The family of Eric Garner, who was murdered in 2014 under
similar circumstances by killer cops in Staten Island, New York, have had to
relive painful memories of his death.
These violent assaults on Black bodies and Black
communities have heightened the mental health trauma that many African
Americans, especially youth, are experiencing in Covid times. The constant replay
of videotaped arrests, beatings, and killings of Black folks elicit fear,
anxiety, depression, and hopelessness in Black youth who may feel that the
burden of everyday living has become too much to bear. Couple this with the
closure of schools, and the elimination of the vital support services they
provide, and there is virtually no quarter for youth who are suffering from the
PTSD elicited by unrelenting anti-blackness.
The mental health toll of COVID suppression has also exacerbated
the academic, emotional, and caregiving burdens that Black girls and girls of
color have always had to shoulder. Sexism and misogynoir are intimately related
in the politics of the pandemic, as Black women essential workers are simultaneously
put on the line to die for their jobs and take care of their children. The U.S.
is one of the few post-industrial nations without universal childcare, and its
absence has had a devastating impact on the everyday lives of Black women and
girls. As COVID-modified school schedules and continued “distance learning”
become the norm, the childcare deficit will be even more pronounced.
Disparities in caregiving, and experiences with sexual
and domestic violence, have long been unifying factors among Black and Latinx girls
in South L.A. schools. Many of my students take care of younger siblings and
older relatives while grappling with unaddressed trauma. During a Black
feminism workshop I taught at Diego Rivera Learning Center before the COVID
shutdowns, a majority of the one hundred girls who attended raised their hands
when I asked whether they were expected to do caregiving duties that their male
relatives were not tasked with. They rattled off babysitting and household
chores as the most exhausting, time-consuming tasks they had to do. As a result, they feel stressed out from
being at home, juggling schoolwork, domestic chores, babysitting, and adult
care. In the midst of the pandemic, many
of them have experienced the daily trauma of seeing their loved ones succumb to
the virus and hearing 24/7 coverage of pandemic-related deaths. Many of them are
also anxiety-ridden about predictions that their lives may never go back to
what they knew before. And many of them must grapple with parents or caregivers
who are incarcerated in a jail where they’re more likely to contract the virus,
on the frontlines as essential workers, or out of work, facing food insecurity
and the constant threat of becoming unhoused.
These stressors are set against the backdrop of looming
state and local budget cuts to education and social services. Over the past two
months since the LAUSD shut down, the activist group Students Deserve has fought to protect the
rights of criminalized students of color disenfranchised by the district’s
transition to distant learning. In the
City of L.A., Mayor Garcetti is angling to increase
the LAPD’s budget by 7.1% for the new fiscal year. This move has been slammed
by Black Lives Matter, Ground Game L.A. and K-town, who argue that Garcetti’s budget
plan, which also proposes furloughing city workers and slash social services, will
further devastate communities of color hardest hit by COVID. Kowtowing to a contract
agreement that the City Council negotiated
last year with the L.A. Police Protective League, Garcetti wants to
dramatically increase LAPD overtime pay, as well as provide bonuses for
officers with college degrees. Garcetti’s office has defended the increases as necessary
for allowing police to transition into social welfare-oriented duties such as “homeless outreach, COVID testing and working
assignments at emergency shelters”. However, any increase
in police presence in L.A.’s communities automatically translates into more
suppression, surveillance, and targeting of black and brown folks. Garcetti’s police
state boondoggle is especially unconscionable given the multiple social welfare
crises that the city’s poorest neighborhoods are facing in a city where housing
is only affordable for an elite few. BLM and other community groups have
spearheaded an alternative “People’s Budget” process that encourages L.A. city
residents to challenge the City’s
budget in an online survey and through public comment to councilmembers.
The U.S. police state is one of the most dangerous
public health threats to Black wellness and mental health. Being able to
breathe, to be mentally whole and healthy, in a violence and suppression free
environment, has historically been a white supremacist luxury. Our children
should not have to live in a nightmare America where breathing while black carries
a death sentence
