Another black person is dead as a result of wrongful arrest. That in itself is not remarkable, unfortunately. And while there appears to be some social media debate as to who was in the right and who was in the wrong in this case, a look at the police dash-cam video is as unambiguous as, well, the one featuring Eric Garner’s summary execution. Sandra Bland, pulled over for not signalling a lane change (for Christ’s sake!), is arrested for not being sufficiently subservient to a Texas State Trooper with a chip on his shoulder. “I will light you up,” the trooper threatens when Bland resists his order to leave the car – a demand issued because the young woman declined to extinguish her cigarette when asked. (Yes, asked, if somewhat testily.)
The video of this incident is chilling, and instructive. It is a window into the mentality of entrenched white domination of black people; nothing less than this. Irritation should not be sufficient cause for arrest, whether it’s being projected by the motorist or the arresting officer. Sandra Bland was not doing as she was asked. She was not bowing and scraping. At the same time, she was not violently confrontational. The Texas State Trooper could have just handed her the ticket – or a warning – and walked back to his cruiser. Once he decided to be a dick about it, there was no backing down – not as the white cop disciplining the black miscreant.
Did she suicide? If she did, I can understand how she got to that place. She had had problems with depression, but for chrissake … she was about to start a new job, and then on the basis of nothing at all, she was taken to jail, held on $5000 bond, her prospects in ruins. The arbitrariness of the criminal justice system – the same injustice against black people she had criticized – was landing on her neck, reducing her to the status of a slave.
Being white, I don’t claim to understand the black experience. But by considering the hard facts of black life, the constant harassment, the endless traffic stops, the serial humiliations, the threats to life and limb, white people can gain a small measure of that understanding. We have to keep that in mind when we hear stories like that of Sandra Bland, or Eric Garner, or Michael Brown, or so many others. Not so easy.
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