Achieving Vanzantian 'thing' state

  

Iyanla Vanzant often demands of her clients that they call a thing a thing. "Call a thing a thing!" she insists, meaning that you must name your pain if you ever wish to heal your pain. When it comes to excessive force and death in custody, our problem is that we can't seem to agree that there even is a pain. That's a problem.

This is Sandra Bland. She died under strange circumstances in 2015. If this meme is to be believed, 499 others died last year alone in the great state of Texas. That number of deaths in cutsody sounds like a 'thing' to me. Iyanla would say it's past time to name it and do something about it.

It seems to me that you have to know there's a problem - a 'thing' - when the Bureau of Justice Statistics has three or four different reporting categories for deaths in custody. Surely that's an indicator that there's a thing out there needing our attention? And that's just the deaths. There's also this report, dated November 2015, which gives a broad overview of complaints of non-lethal force between 2002 and 2011. And still we don't seem to be ready to call it a thing yet.

As a nation, our great challenge is that we seem to be able to explain away nearly every instance of excessive force or death in custody rendering it ever less likely that we'll get to 'thing' state. Generally, we  engage in grotesque victim-blaming that typically goes like this: "If - insert deceased's name here - had just - insert police order here - this would not have happened". The best (worst) case of that I've heard was a woman who claimed that Tamir Rice was at fault in his own death because - I kid you not - he was big for his age. 

In this week's "What's happening in the world of excessive force" video, a woman is being subdued by two police officers. The fact  that these two men are larger than the alleged criminal and yet there doesn't seem to be any attempt to subdue her without first doing violence to her person is troubling enough. More troubling though, are the comments already being bandied about. Yes, I get it! Mall Security said she brandished a knife and as we all know, security and police officers are never mistaken - neither accidentally nor on purpose - about these things. So please, carry on with the beat down. "What else did she expect?", "You don't understand what these officers have to deal with every day!" And so on.

I appreciate that police work is difficult work, but there are other difficult jobs. Teaching is difficult; so is trash collecting; so too are rocket science, bus driving and hair braiding. All jobs are difficult if for different reasons. The level of complexity or outright unpleasantness of a job however serves as neither explanation  nor justification for abusing the people with whom one is required to deal. That's just not how this works. You don't get 'OK you can beat on folks or spit in their eye' points just because your job's difficult. And if you do, where does one sign up? I'm asking for a friend.........

In Texas, according to the meme above, five hundred lives ended after 500 people - some of them most assuredly innocent - had the misfortune to have encounters with the police. In Texas. One state. One. Out of fifty. Are we OK with these and other losses? We OK with that? We are OK with folk being dead for running a red light or failing to indicate a lane change (Sandra Bland's initial cause for her stop); robbery; murder absent even a cursory look in at the court house? We're OK with this judge, jury and executioner on the sidewalk business?

The greater issue to me, greater still than the prevalence of these extra-judicial deaths, is the fact that we can't seem to agree that there's even a problem; that these data describe a crisis unfolding right in front of us; that the data describe a thing.

It's clear that the whole of Houston, the whole of Texas, the whole of America isn't going to recognize that there's a problem until the chickens come home to roost and there's chicken sheet every which where. How soon might we be getting to that point?

I'm not going to argue with anyone ever again about what it is that folk like me need to do to stay safe. It's all bullsheet anyway. James Blake was standing on the street minding his business when he was tackled by a police officer who mistook him for someone else. There is no safety. We accept that. Tamir was playing with a toy gun and John Crawford was buying a toy gun in Walmart. There is no safety. Charles Blow's son was walking on the Yale University campus. There is no safety. All they needed to do to avoid trouble, was be at home and sometimes even that isn't enough. Guilty or innocent, we are not safe. The end.

Remember Sandra Bland. Remember Texas. Sandra died under inexplicable circumstances in 2015. It turns out, the meme is wrong, the actual number of dead is 550. Are we there yet? Is this thing a thing yet? Can we call it? Iyanla? Where you at girl?

Pause for a moment and just contemplate how many dead - outside the bounds of jury trial and state-sanctioned execution the data represent. Just consider that for a second. Consider what has been lost. Consider the mothers, the fathers, the brothers and sisters who have been lost. And then, having considered that for just a second, decide whether you're OK with it. I'm not but it sure looks like we are cuz we don't seem to be doing anything other than justisplainin' why the dead caused their own deaths, and the injured their own injuries.

Houston, we have a problem. That we have to discutez ad nauseum and argue over whether there's a problem? That's the real problem or part of it. The dead are but a symptom. The data don't lie. People are dying but then, are the dead even 'people'? Maybe that's the real problem.