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I study race, medicine, disability, slavery, and visual culture. I'm trying to muster the energy, language, and skill to explain why sharing the video and images of Mr. Floyd being murdered is traumatizing & antithetical to the desired impact of *some* of those sharing.
In particular, I write about Emmett Till. Till has been much on my mind in this week when a white women's claims eerily echo those of Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose claims led to Till's death. 2/until I get done explaining what I need to say.
Many of us remember with stark immediate emotion we encountered the first time we saw the image of Emmett Till in his coffin. I know I do. I still remember where I was, can feel the clothes on my body, remember what the smell of the room was. It was a devastation. 3/
Most of us learned that it's the horror of that image that changed the hearts and minds of segregationists. But that's not what happened. What happened is that image evoked a powerful desire for justice in Black people; and it documented violence in a very different way. 4/
The image of Till's tortured body *were not* the only time that images of tortured Black people had been distributed. Since the advent of photography in 1839, the torture of people of color has been documented and disseminated. 5/
Your sharing of images of Black people being tortured, murdered, or harmed is part of a centuries old tradition of display of Black pain. & if the display of Black people in pain was enough to end racism, haven't we at long last seen enough? And if not, why not? 6/
If images of Black pain were enough, wouldn't radicalized violence and extrajudicial murder and lynching have stopped? But they haven't, have they? Because images are complicated and part of a larger visual history and grammar. 7/
Mamie Till Mobley was undone & remade by the loss of her son. She shared the image of Emmett b/c it was terrifying. Because Black people saw that image and something shifted in us to see that child's body tortured and in ruin in the service of white supremacy. 8/
But Mamie Till Mobley made that boy's body. She had housed that boy's body in her flesh, had a traumatizing birth to bring him into the world, loved him (loved him so fiercely.) So when she shares what happened to him, tells us to look? That is her right. 9/
Through the pain of losing a child, Mamie Till Mobley let us be terrified by what had been done to him. The image of Till haunts Black people. Do you understand? For most of us it's an initiation into death by white supremacy. 10/
Sharing an image of a Black person in pain does not do what you may imagine it does. How many images of Black people's deaths do we need? How many exactly? 11/
This isn't 1955. But more than 50 years after Mamie Till Mobley shared her child with the world, we've made a catalog of Black pain & death. You're participating in a violent act when you don't think re: how you're circulating the image of Mr. Floyd's death. 12/
If you're compelled, crop the image so that Mr. Floyd's last moments are respected. Don't share the video. Think carefully re: the visual imagery you engage, how it circulates, and what it upholds.
This really should be an article. 13/Fin
This really should be an article. 13/Fin
