Being Darnella

I cannot stop worrying about Darnella Frazier. I think of her courage at least once a day. She was "walking her cousin to the store," a thing older black girls do with the full realization that their very lives may be required.  My late sister Patrina used to "walk me to the store."  I didn't walk to the store until I was old enough to "walk" a younger child.

I really believe Darnella would have confronted that cop physically if he had not threatened to harm her. She took the judicious course; Derek Chauvin was already killing the man on the ground in front of her.  She kept rolling. She shot video while that man was killing George Floyd with his hand in his pocket--reaching for what--exactly? 

I'll always think that disgusting man was fondling himself while he killed George Floyd.

Always.

This is not white people's story to tell.  They certainly want to laud her courage. I can't let them do it. Newsrooms all over America showed Darnella's footage, with a tepid 'disturbing' disclaimer. Hour after hour, day after day, Mister Floyd's dying seared our collective psyches.  I had already tried and failed to scroll past it on social media for the three days before national news catches on to ANYTHING. I finally just made myself watch it. During the entire thing, I thought of Darnella. I have boys. What if one of them had come home from the store with this video? How would I have been able to comfort him? 

A daughter? 

My baby girl watched a man die and didn't back down. She faced down that cop and ended his career. She looked a murderer in the eye and did not flinch!

But I couldn't shield her. I couldn't keep George Floyd from his horrific death, either. And now what? People still protesting, but the politicians have slotted George and all the others into their convenient narrative of 'legislation,' which is not going to help Darnella Frazier sleep at night.  She is never going to unsee his passing. Unlike us, she heard clearly and in real time every plea, gasp, and sob of a grown man. That man could have been her dad, her brother, her uncle--maybe she knew him from the streets. Decent black men watch you grow into a woman while you "walk to the store." They protect you from the other types, too.

If there were more PoC in positions of power in television newsrooms, George Floyd's death would not have played continuously like a snuff reel.  I daresay Donald Trump wants to see more people die now, since the media made it so easy for him to just sit back, turn on cable news, and witness his evil handiwork.  A black producer and director would have been saying "You've seen George Floyd die often enough, and so have your kids.  Let's talk about Darnella."