Who Gets To Be A Victim?

Breonna Taylor and the victims we choose not to see.

This week a grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky, charged only one police officer—not for the bullets that killed 26-year-old Breonna Taylor in her home, but for the bullets that endangered her (white) neighbour. Kentucky’s attorney general, Daniel Cameron, reasoned that “Mob justice is not justice. Justice sought by violence is not justice. It just becomes revenge.” Apparently Black people protesting for police accountability is considered “mob justice.” But as Melanye Price suggests, doesn’t “mob justice” more accurately describe the 186 lynchings of African Americans that took place between 1877 and 1934 in the same state? This disturbing contradiction, not to mention the verdict itself, got me thinking—who gets to be a victim?

When George Flloyd’s murder in May sparked mass protests, I wondered why Breonna Taylor’s story didn’t go viral two months prior. Certainly it helped that there was footage of Flloyd’s death, but it’s not like violence against Black women hasn’t been recorded …