We are all Renisha McBride

    On November 2nd, 2013 Renisha McBride's parents received the call no parent wants to receive. Their daughter had been killed in a shooting on the front porch of Paul Wafer, a resident of Dearborn Heights near Detroit, Michigan. Shortly before being in a single car accident, it is believed that Renisha left the scene disoriented and sought help on the Mr. Wafer's porch. When he believed she was there to break into his house, he shot the unarmed nineteen year old in the head with a shotgun.

    When police arrived, Mr. Wafer claimed that he accidentally fired the gun, that he was standing his ground by protecting himself. He was not arrested or charged until two weeks after Renisha's death. The incident immediately reminded the public, especially the black American public of Trayvon Martin and the many other unarmed black teens that have been killed for walking, talking and being in the wrong place while black.

     The rhetoric was very similar to what we heard after Trayvon Martin's death and after George Zimmerman's trial. However, I cannot help but notice the communal response seems very different than it was when we lost all the black young men before Renisha. There were no national rallies in the way that we saw for Trayvon Martin, though there were in Detroit. I wondered if this was perhaps due to the fact that after the damaging loss that allowed George Zimmerman to walk free, our community has in some ways given up the fight. Have we come to the point where we see yet another black child dead and feel no sense of urgency to do something because we know there is nothing we can do?


Or could this incidence be related to the gender of the victim?

     When the shooting first happened, I remember seeing a Facebook post by a friend that said something along the lines of, "Another black child dead. #canwetalkaboutourdaughtersnow"

     It really got me to think about the ways in which women have been shut out from the conversation of violence against the black community. After the verdict was read in the Zimmerman case, a Congressional hearing was called on the National state of young black boys and men in America. I was working on the hill when this happened and was happy to see something being done, but could not help but notice the way national rhetoric framed who this story was really about. It was not about black people, it was about black men. The message was not, protect our black children, it was, protect our black sons. Black men needed to be protected and they were not afraid to call on black women to do it.

I cannot recount the amount of times I saw articles with titles like this:

"The Talk: How parents raising black boys try to keep their sons safe" - Time Magazine

     What about our black daughters? What happens to them? Does our femaleness some how counteract the blackness that makes black men a threat? Are we somehow less dangerous or threatening than black men? I remember being a teenager and making white people uncomfortable, especially while with a group of friends. It was obvious they felt threatened even when no men were around. 

     Black women are called upon constantly to support black issues when the majority of the time the solutions to those issues are in the favor of black men. Black men want to talk about ending stereotypes that black men assault white women but never want to talk about how black men assault black women. They ask us to show up, to protect black men - to have talks with about protecting our sons and not to have those same talks with our daughters. 

     I think it is time we start having those conversations with our daughters too. Because if the death of Renisha McBride has taught us anything, it's that black women are a threat to white society. It is time we start asking black men to show up to the table. It is time for people to stop conflating blackness with maleness. 

Why is it so uncomfortable to think that we are all Renisha McBride?