Say her Name. Say all of their Names

Black women who are victims of police brutality and assault are constantly pushed out of the dialogue and activism, and it needs to stop.

I never knew what it felt like to have a heavy heart until today.

I woke up to a name trending on my Twitter feed—Oluwatoyin Salau. Salau was a vocal activist for the Black Lives Matter movement and had appeared in several videos of the protests in Tallahassee, Florida. On June 6, after receiving no help from the police, she tweeted that she was sexually assaulted by a middle-aged Black man after he offered to give her a ride to the church she was taking shelter in the night before. That was the last day anyone saw her.

Today, her body was found on the side of a road.

She was only 19.

In her final days, with her last breath, she was fighting for her people. Yet no one fought for her.

My heart is heavy.

In the United States of America, Black women, enduring both sexism and racism, have a most unique and difficult experience. In this new height of the Black Lives Matter movement, it has become crystal clear that this particular experience warrants its own outcry for attention. Hence the birth of “Say Her Name”, because the names of Black women are too often whispered in the movement when they need to be shouted from the rooftops. Over the years there have been numerous Black women who can serve as examples of this unique injustice. While each name deserves to be said, there are 3 that come to mind at this moment in time.

Oluwatoyin Salau, of course.

Breonna Taylor, a 26-year- EMT who on March 13 was brutally shot to death in her own home when Louisville police officers, under a “no-knock” search warrant, used a battering ram to crash into her apartment and fired several shots. It has been over 3 months and those officers have not been arrested or charged.

And Sandra Bland, whose case, although 5 years old, should be familiar to us all. The confrontation that transpired on July 10, 2015, went like this: After failing to signal a lane change Bland was pulled over by white officer Brian Encinia. He did the standard procedure of collecting her documents and writing her a citation, but what happened afterward was not procedure. Encinia “escalated the situation…[by] deciding to question her about being ‘irritated’”, to which she replied in a miffed tone that she was (Hill, 64). Then he ordered her to put out her cigarette, which she didn’t legally have to do, and she refused, and to get out her car, which she also refused to do. The police dashboard camera and a bystander’s cellphone camera revealed that from that point on the encounter went downhill. Bland was forcibly removed from the car and roughly handcuffed and arrested. Three days later she was found in her Waller County Jail cell hanging from a garbage bag noose; the cause of death was suicide.

The universal takeaway from these tragedies is that they didn’t have to end in their deaths. Moreover, Bland’s case specifically makes the systemic nature of the issue very clear. In the incident, “it was only when Bland refused to comply with his request that Encinia ordered her out of the car…It was clear that Encinia was punishing Bland for her attitude” (Hill, 64). Black feminist scholar Brittney Cooper concurs that “[Encinia] firmly expected to be able to harass a citizen going about her business and have her be okay with it. He expected that she wouldn’t question him. He wanted her submission. Her deference. Her fear. White power. Black submission. It’s the oldest trick in the white supremacist handbook.” (Cooper). As Cooper states, this dynamic that was seen between Bland and Enincia is nothing new.

Unfortunately, “this is not an uncommon expectation of Black women and girls who are disproportionately arrested for minor crimes because their behavior is deemed by law enforcement to have ‘violated conventional norms and stereotypes of feminine behavior” (Hill, 64). This stems from stereotypes with roots dating all the way back to slavery. The applicable one in Bland’s case being ‘the mammy’; “the faithful, obedient domestic servant… Whites expect Black women to exhibit deferential behavior and deeply resent those who do not. Mammy is the public face that whites expect Black women to assume for them” (Collin,73). Given this stereotype, Encinia unrightfully expected Bland’s subservience and was outraged when it wasn’t given. Clearly Bland was not the mammy archetype, so his anger, although disgusting, is not surprising.

Furthermore, although Sandra Bland’s death was not directly caused by state violence, it was a product of state-sponsored violence, so the state is still largely at fault (Hill, 66). Her story makes it apparent that she “was a casualty of a broken criminal justice system that criminalizes vulnerability and, more specifically, Black womanhood” (Hill, 66). A Black woman’s defiance has always been, and still is, a sign of disrespect and, accordingly, an indication to attack.

A Black woman’s sexuality is also something that is governed and continuously condemned. Throughout U.S. history, “Black women have been sexually stereotyped as immoral, insatiable, perverse; the initiators of all sexual contacts- abusive or otherwise” (Gates and Burton, 1113). Once again, this is a stereotype that stems from slavery, and that stereotype is ‘the jezebel’:

“The jezebel, whore, or ‘hoochie’—[which] is central in this nexus of controlling images

of Black womanhood. Because efforts to control Black women’s sexuality lie at the heart

of Black women’s oppression, historical jezebels, and contemporary “hoochies” represent

a deviant Black female sexuality… Jezebel’s function was to relegate all Black women to

the category of sexually aggressive women, thus providing a powerful rationale for the

widespread sexual assaults by white men typically reported by Black slave women”(Collin, 81).

A black woman’s sexuality is perpetually equated to impurity. Moreover, she is regarded as the begetter of that impurity while society, which is what initially established and continues to bolster that impure association, is not to blame.

This stereotype is not only upheld by sexist and prejudiced everyday citizens, as any stereotype is but also by the justice system. As usual, history has informed the present:

"Law reflected the belief that Black women were promiscuous. Every colonial state that

adopted a rape statute that defined the crime as an offense that happened to White women. No White man could ever rape a slave woman. Even as between slaves, forcible

intercourse against the consent of the Black female slave was not rape… After

Emancipation, sexualized imagery of Black women continued to be common. ‘Black

women continued to be perceived by white America as individuals who desired

promiscuous relationships.’ Scholar Deborah White states that through more than two-

thirds of the twentieth century ‘no Southern white male was convicted of raping or

attempting to rape a [B]lack woman.’ The persistence of the sexualized imagery of Black

women impacts today’s legal process and is certainly relevant to issues such as whether

the police and/or prosecutors believe a Black woman can actually be raped or was

actually raped as opposed to engaging in consensual sexual activity that she may later

regret" (Jacobs, 48).

Oluwatoyin "Toyin" Salau, a young Black woman, was taken advantage of in what was probably her most vulnerable state; in the midst of being a voice for her race while simultaneously trying to find her footing after leaving her abusive household, she was sexually assaulted. She was either not believed or heard by the police, she was not searched for thoroughly by them as well when she went missing, and she was ultimately permanently silenced by her murderer. This did not occur by happenstance. This was the result of a system working as it was designed hundreds of years ago—to disbelieve and neglect Black women.

Since we are in both a racist and patriarchal system, more often than not, within the black community (and hence the Black Lives Matter movement) women are overlooked. This is a fact. Therefore, while the Black Lives Matter movement is meant to include all Black lives, many of those lives are ignored. To say that this is dangerous is an understatement; this is a genocide waiting to happen.

This morning I cried. I am Black, and a woman and I am terrified. However, for my Black women, I will fight through my fear. I will fight for them unceasingly. I will shout their names until they can no longer be avoided.

We need justice for Oluwatoyin Salau. Her abuser and killer need to be found, arrested, charged, and sentenced.

We need justice for Breonna Taylor. Her killers—Brett Hankison, Jonathan Matingly, and Myles Cosgrove—need to be arrested, charged, and sentenced.

We need justice for Sandra Bland. Her case needs to be re-opened and reinvestigated because she too was cast to the side.

We need justice for every Black woman, the names that have become hashtags and especially the ones that haven’t, because that is what we deserve.

I will continue to fight earnestly for justice, and so will my fellow Black sisters. I just hope the Black Lives Matter movement does the same.

Sources Cited:

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of

empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2015. Print.

Cooper, Brittney. "I could have been Sandra Bland: Black America’s terrifying truth." Salon.

N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2017. http://www.salon.com.

Jacobs, Michelle S., The Violent State: Black Women's Invisible Struggle Against Police

Violence, 24 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 39 (2017), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmjowl/vol24/iss1/4

Hill, Marc Lamont. Nobody: Casualties of America's war on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to

Flint and Beyond. New York: Atria, 2016. Print.