National
Sheron Patterson: McKinney Video Traumatizes Black Women
Video showed McKinney police Cpl. Eric Casebolt yank 15-year-old Dajerria Becton onto her stomach. (Courtesy of Brandon Brooks/YouTube)
(Dallas Morning News) – I had become numb to the constant exposure to vicious racism caught on video. It’s my mechanism for coping with rising acts of hatred. You have to figure a way to process the racism. Otherwise, you lose your mind to rage and frustration.
I had become accustomed to scenes of African-American men, young and old, being killed at the hands of police. It was a African-American male thing, I thought. Surely, an African-American woman would be treated with the same dignity given to all women.
Assumed gone: The days of slave women’s bodies shamelessly exploited. Gone are the days when women civil rights protestors had their dresses torn to shreds by police dogs and water cannons. I thought women were safe in 2015.
Then I saw the McKinney video.
