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I study race, medicine, disability, slavery, and visual culture. I& #39;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& #39;s claims eerily echo those of Carolyn Bryant Donham, whose claims led to Till& #39;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& #39;s the horror of that image that changed the hearts and minds of segregationists. But that& #39;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& #39;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& #39;t we at long last seen enough? And if not, why not? 6/
If images of Black pain were enough, wouldn& #39;t radicalized violence and extrajudicial murder and lynching have stopped? But they haven& #39;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& #39;s body tortured and in ruin in the service of white supremacy. 8/
But Mamie Till Mobley made that boy& #39;s body. She had housed that boy& #39;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& #39;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& #39;s deaths do we need? How many exactly? 11/
