I can’t stop thinking about the fact that it’s been 65 yes since Mamie Till chose to give her son Emmett an open casket funeral for people to care. And we still have to rely on the viral exposure of Black pain for people to care even for a moment.

Mamie should have been the last

*years

I really started out as someone who believed the photos and videos were necessary. Who believed that we “couldn’t look away” and we had to “bear witness.”

Whether that was right or wrong then, it can’t possibly even be *necessary* now.

How many times do you need to see it?!

“I can finally understand what Black people go through now that we can see it...”

Lynching postcards date back to the 1880s.

Emmett Till’s open casket image was front page news in 1955.

Rodney King was beaten on video in 1991.

Folks knew. And didn’t care.

Witness videos as evidence and witness videos as viral content are two different conversations.

I understand the argument that
videos help the public mount pressure.

I’m asking us to sit with how trash it is that the public has to mount pressure to be served by its servants

If your goal is to use viral content to help the police get convicted, it works so rarely that you gotta question the supposed upside before you press “share.” https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-its-still-so-rare-for-police-officers-to-face-legal-consequences-for-misconduct/

Some of yall are openly sharing these videos for RTs.

And some of y’all are watching them because you want to see if you think we deserved it.

That’s the disgusting truth of it all.

A news outlet embedding a video in an article is very different from folks wanting to be the “first” to get this kind of footage trending.

Y’all ain’t slick and we aren’t stupid.

I need to log off.

My blood is boiling.

I’m gonna put my energy back into my work and praying for Jacob Blake’s full recovery.