I’m afraid of dying like Eric Garner
The following piece originally appeared on The Root. It was written by Jean McGianni Celestin, and appears under the title of, “I’m Terrified of Dying Like Eric Garner.”
By: Jean McGianni Celestin
When video footage of a California highway patrolman pummeling a defenseless 51-year-old black woman named Marlene Pinnock surfaced on July 1, it sent shock waves throughout many communities around the country. It took place in broad daylight on the side of a freeway, and was heart-wrenching to watch as she was pursued on foot by the officer, slammed to the ground and punched repeatedly in the head like someone on the losing end of a vicious Ultimate Fighting Championship bout. To those of us who know this painful violence all too well though, we were simply relieved that the attack had not ended fatally for Pinnock.
That sort of twisted logic is what happens sometimes when one has seen or experienced this kind of trauma one too many times. It’s what happens in the aftershock of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin andJonathan Ferrell. It’s what some of us have felt since the terror of the day we watched the Rodney King beating on TV in 1991.
It forces the mind to either rupture with rage or adjust to the injustice by accepting this as an inconvenient caveat of being black in America.
On Thursday, July 17, Eric Garner died on a sidewalk in Staten Island after a New York policeman ambushed him from behind with a devastating choke hold. The 43-year-old black married father of six children had reportedly broken up a fight moments before two officers arrived and attempted to arrest him instead on the suspicion that he had sold a “loosie,” an untaxed cigarette, to someone. The tragic encounter was captured on video by one of Garner’s friends and quickly gained national oxygen after it was posted online. In the footage, Garner can be heard telling one of the officers: “Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it.” Tired of being harassed. Tired of being treated like a criminal. Tired of being hunted in black skin.
The recording doesn’t require any ancillary emotions to convey the pain Garner suffered at the hands of these officers. The asthmatic Garner can be heard wheezing, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,” while being choked as more officers jump on top of him before his body apparently goes limp.
It’s not often that we get to see someone die so tragically in real life. Yet, Garner’s death is part of a long-standing narrative of terrorizing black people in this country for generations.
As a 34-year-old black man, I am terrified of ending up like Eric Garner. Living in New York City, I carry the fear of being harmed by the police daily. And while black-on-black crime is as much of a statistical threat to my life as unprovoked police violence, I fear the latter more exceedingly when I walk out of my front door every morning.
It’s a horror that countless black people harbor and is reinforced on every street corner of America.
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