Black women and girls are regularly erased from public memory. When they are killed at the hands of police, the obscurity and omission deepen. This erasure takes many forms: Lack of media coverage. Exclusion from public memorials. Failure to teach their stories in schools.
In Kimberlé Crenshaw's new book #SayHerName: Black Women's Stories of State Violence and Public Silence, out today, the UCLA and Columbia University law professor thoughtfully memorializes 177 Black women killed between 1975 and 2022, zeroing in on nine narratives told by their loved ones who make their grief known through vivid storytelling. Throughout the haunting book she co-authored with her social justice think tank, the African American Policy Forum, she interweaves meticulous research and emphatic, stinging commentary to paint a poignant and often distressing picture of the state of racialized gender violence.
"If we can't hold Black women who've been killed by police with the same care and concern as we hold our brothers and our sons," Crenshaw tells me, "if we can't do it for them, then we can't do it for any set of issues in which Black women are marginalized and challenged." |
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