He came. He find. He brutalized.
In a disturbing viral video, Columbia, South Carolina deputy Ben Fields( a white male police officer the size of an offensive lineman, better known as Officer Slam to students) leers toward an unsuspecting young Black female student at Spring Valley High School. According to unconfirmed reports, as the Root notes, she refused to leave the classroom per her instructors demand, for allegedly not following a few cases simple orders: namely, to stop chewing gumor to put away her phone. But that's irrelevant.
As the footage shows, the unidentified student is apparently without a weapon. She poses no clear and present threat. Shes not even suspected of having committed a violent crimes. Yet Fields, acting as the schools safety officer, enters the classroom to intervene on the teachers behalf. Hes barely tries to encourage her cooperation, let alone ask for her side of the tale. Instead, Fields immediately picks her up from her desk, slings her across the room, and continues roughing her up after she thuds to the floor.
On face, that alone might be enough for most people on the Internet to respond in indignation, outrage, or abhorrence with the excessive force used by the officer against an unarmed high school student. But where theres a will to be ignorant, theres indeed a way. Cue the impulsive, enabled online commentators swaying in to defend law enforcement.
As the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh shows, yet again, the Internet is filled to the brim with people who assert that Black people must have done something to deserve brutal treatment from policemen. Since Monday, the hashtag associated with the violent incident has elicitedmore than 150,000 tweets, according to Topsy, but the online sentiment still exposes a broader indifference or unwillingness to condemn anti-Black police brutality.
Its time to stop defending police officers who behave with the impunity theyre afforded, both by the long arm of the law, and by usespecially as it pertains to Black women and girls.
One prime enabler of Fields actions at Spring Valley High, and a culprit du jour in the debates on anti-Black combating racism and violence, is none other than Don Lemon. In his initial on-air reply, the CNN anchors line of questioning proved so controversial, his name( again) became a top-1 0 trending Twitter topic in the United States, triggering online debate about whether or not the young student shouldve been treated in such a manner.
This televised exchange is about more than Don Lemons persistent ignorance while covering racial issues on a major national platform .
Id like to know more before passing decision, Lemon said, a position echoed by many online onlookers in the hours immediately following the release of three different angles of footage from that Spring Valley classroom. But former federal prosecutor, CNN contributor Sunny Hostinwho happens to be a Black woman, and an expert much more qualified to address the nature of the situationimmediately challenged his legal logic.
I dont need to know more, Hostin said, despite Lemons attempts to shush her. The law provides that the standard here is whether the policeman has to use this type of force, whether its reasonable and necessary to somehow secure discipline in the school. The bottom line is, Don, this is a young girl in school. "Were not receiving" justification for using this kind and it is assault.
The next day, Richmond County Sheriff Leon Lott had similar questions as Hostin, which prompted the FBI to open an investigation into the matter on Tuesday.
To be clear, this is about more than Don Lemonspersistent ignorance while covering racial issues on a major national platform. Its about the propensityfrom Black men in positions of power, racists with reckless abandon, and staunch policeman defenders on the Internetto erase, ignore, or downplay the pain that many Black women and girls face at the hands of police officers, many of whom are white.
The online defense of Fields also highlights a pernicious doubled standard .
Citing Lemons questioning, online users have concealed behind faux-journalistic ethics and a purported need for verification to enable the ones who defend Fields the most. In a post for the unaffiliated CNN Commentary blog, which Lemon retweeted on Tuesday, the author laud Lemon hesitantly, calling him for once the voice of reason before denouncing the trolls( including Hostin) who detonation him on Twitter. Lemons reactionone shared by several on social mediawas praised as reasonable and responsible.
But even further, the online defense of Fields also highlights a pernicious doubled standard.
Anyone with a beating pulsation could bet their years income that the Internet reactionand maybe even Lemonswould be markedly different if a burly, bodybuilding, Black male police officer roughed up a white, blonde, female student in a high school class. The Internet would be in even bigger uproar calling for the officers ouster, and he wouldve likely been fired without question, even before a formal investigation took shape, as Fields has been afforded.
Yet its officers like Fields who often get the benefit of the doubt from many commentators, and even get away with assassination in the courts. That includes Daniel Holtzclaw in Oklahoma, who still faces charges for allegedly abusing his power to serially rape multiple Black women. It also includes Eric Casebolt in McKinney, Texas, who resigned after slamming and pinning a teenage Black girl wearing a swimsuit, while use his handgun to scare away concerned bystanders over an alleged pool party dispute. And lest we not forget Brian Encinia, in Waller County, Texas, who savagely took down an unarmed Sandra Bland over an alleged traffic violation, dragging her out of her auto and leading her to the holding station where shed soon, mysteriously die.
And with the racial role reversalhad the policeman been Black and the student been whiteat most any other high school in America, the classroom instructor may have even tried to deescalate the situation. The young lady bystanding peers may have challenged his authority even more than they did at Spring Valley, where a number of concerned students defiantly recorded the incident on their cell phones.
Notably, one of those students1 8-year-old Niya Kenny, a young Black womanwas also arrested for interfering in defense of her classmate.
I was screaming, What the f, what the f is really happening? I was praying out loud for the girl, she told South Carolinas WLTX, adding that she also recorded the traumatic event on her cameraphone. I simply couldnt believe this was happening, I was just crying, and he said, Since you have so much to say, you are coming too. I simply set my hands behind my back.
But as Kenny also highlights, according to reports, Fields has a sick reputation for managing female students. Ive heard in the past slammed pregnant women, teenage girls, hes known for slamming, Kenny told MSNBCs Chris Hayes on Tuesday evening , noting that she told fellow classmates to strap in for an unsettling episode. And given his violent reputation for excessive force, Kenny said she also encouraged her peers to take out their cell phones to film an incident that she knew wouldnt end well.
If a surrender, white supremacist assassination suspect can getcoddled into police detention, then young, unarmed Black students should expect more from police officer .
Kennys dreads arent unfounded, after all, given Fieldss history of misconduct and racial bias. In addition, as the Roots Kristen West-Savali highlights, Black girls in the United States are six times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their white counterparts, per a 2015 reportfrom the African American Policy Forum. As AAPF co-founder and law professor Kimberle Crenshaw notes in the report, Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected, concerns about the risks that Black girls and other girls of coloring tackle rarely find the full attention of researchers, proponents, policy makers, and funders.
Indeed, the why does it have to be about race defense simply doesnt work in the situation where racial and gender biases, combined, demonstrably play a role in how Black girls are treated in school decideds. If the challenges of girls of coloring are to be addressed, then research and policy frameworks must move beyond the notion that all of the youth of coloring who are working in crisis are boys, the reports executive summary states, and that the concerns of white girls are indistinguishable from those of girls of coloring.
What will it take for the public to condemn police brutality outright, when its a clear and present danger to people of color in America, including and especially Black women and girls? If the Internet has long waited for a reason, the #AssaultAtSpringValleyHigh is most certainly a prime one. But, even so, the reasons are irrelevant here, because no person in similar circumstances deserves being brutalized by the police officers who swore to protect them.
If a surrender, white supremacist assassination suspect( read: the Charleston shooter) can getcoddled into police detention and equipped with a bulletproof vestafter murdering several Black church congregants simply a two-hour drive away from Spring Valley High Schoolthen young, unarmed Black students should expect police officer and government agencies to fully regard their lives with respect and dignity.
Because their Black lives matter, even when the Internet argues otherwise.
Derrick Cliftonis the deputy opinion editor for the Daily Dot and a New York-based journalist and speaker, primarily covering issues of identity, culture, and social justice .Photo via _the.kidd/ Instagram( CC by 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
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