Stop Sharing Videos Of Jacob Blake Being Shot By Police

‘People can cry much easier than they can change’ are words by James Baldwin that I think about often. I have considered these words even more during the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement and the reaction of organisations and non-Black people, to the realities of police brutality in relation to Black people around the world.

Yesterday on social media, I watched countless numbers of people share the harrowing video of Jacob Blake, a 29 year old Black man, being shot eight times in the back by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This atrocity took place in front of three of his children.

I wish I could fathom an incredibly eloquent way to convey the pain that surged through my entire body having to catch continuous glimpses of the state-sanctioned violence meted out by the police onto yet another Black person. I am deliberate in not including the word ‘innocent’ as an adjective in that sentence, because even this is a violence. Black people should not have to jump through hoops of morality in order to be afforded empathy.

It seems Jacob Blake was breaking up a fight between two women and ended up being paralysed from the waist down and have most of his colon and small intestines removed as a result of this shooting. This sort of brutality by the police continues to happen because the police force in America especially, has been cultivated on the false basis of the inherent criminality of Blackness.

My reason for writing this piece is not to give a bite size lecture on the origins of the police force as it relates to its highest demographic of victims (Black people). I write this piece to impress upon those who claim that they want to be anti-racist - that sharing videos of Black people being mutilated is not activism.

‘But I am trying to raise awareness!’ they profess.

There comes a point where we have to be honest with ourselves as individuals and as a society, and become accountable to the ways that our intentions cause more harm than good.

If you wanted to ‘raise awareness’ about the injustice faced by a white person, would you show the violence in action? It is highly unlikely, because the way race has been constructed means that humanity is something closely positioned with whiteness and non-white bodies have historically been sites of colonisation and objectification.

The brutal reality is that sharing and watching videos of Black people being harmed or killed by police has become a sport for some to perform their ‘disgust’ while doing little else to address the system that continues to allow for this to happen.

Early this morning, I watched the press conference held by Jacob Blake’s family and I resonated deeply with a statement made by one of his sisters, Letetra Widman; 'I’m not sad. I’m not sorry. I’m angry and I’m tired. I have not cried one time. I stopped crying years ago…I have been watching the police murder people who look like me for years…I don’t want your pity, I want change.'

Black people deserve the change that century after century; they have fought, marched, sat down, sat in, written and sang for.

Videos like the one of Jacob Blake being shot by police, are even shared on television news channels. LBC radio station encouraged listeners to look up the video online and then call in to share their views on it as well as the Black Lives Matter movement. Sharing these traumatising videos doesn’t raise the awareness of people who are desensitised to Black pain.

Instead what I see taking place too often, is people commenting on what the victim should and should not have done to avoid being shot, strangled, or kneeled on by the police. I wonder if these trauma porn commentators are aware that there is usually a case where the victim has done exactly as they have suggested and still being killed or hurt anyway. The issue with the police and Black people is not whether the Black person is doing as they’re told or not, it is the Blackness of the victim that is criminal above all.

More than that, the ability to callously admonish a victim of police brutality with how they could’ve avoided the situation, is racism at play. It is an attempt to shift the blame from those in the position of power to the victim, thus making more robust the power of the oppressive authority figure.

I hate to break it to some of you but your black squares cannot be the beginning and end of your activism. Your 'disbelief that this is happening in 2020' (whatever that means) cannot be the finish line of your anti-racism aspirations. 'It is overwhelming to process the deeply entrenched racism in our society', you say? Now imagine being overwhelmed by a trauma that you still have to navigate daily and still radically make space for joy and love.

The last legal public lynching in America was in 1936, but since then we have seen more executions of Black people at the hands of law enforcement and nothing has been done to dismantle the system that allows for this violence to continue. How can anything be done when the western world has formed a lot of their laws on the othering and vilification of Blackness?

History shows that the police force as we know it in America originated from slave patrols. This is important to note because it means that, fundamentally, at its core the police will always be an oppressive force where Blackness is concerned.

Let this piece serve as a call to action for us all. We can’t 'love and light' or 'thoughts and prayers' our way out of systemic and institutional racism. Stop sharing videos recklessly and do some real work. Less crying, more change.

Follow Kelechi Okafor on Instagram here.

Click through for anti-racism charities in the UK and US including Jacob Blake's GoFundMe for medical bills...