I write this with the same tears that flow, and heartache that bellows every time I refer to Breonna Taylor in the past tense. Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old Black woman. She worked as an emergency medical technician and planned a lifelong career in health care. She dreamed of becoming a nurse, buying a house, and starting a family. On March 13, 2020 while supposedly investigating two men they believed were selling drugs, plainclothes narcotics Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove were executing a no-knock search warrant when they used a battering ram to enter Breonna Taylor’s apartment. Kenneth Walker, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend, lived with her in the apartment and along with her believed someone was breaking in. He acted in self-defense and shot his licensed firearm, striking a police officer in the leg. In response, the officers fired over twenty shots, at least eight of which struck Breonna Taylor. She received no medical attention for more than 20 minutes after she was shot and was pronounced dead at the scene. No drugs (or suspects) were found in the apartment. However, the police’s filed incident report stated that she had no injuries and that no forced entry occurred. Since March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit. The Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, is now leading the investigation and the F.B.I. is investigating as well. Since protests began in late May, Louisville officials have banned the use of no-knock warrants.  Brett Hankison was fired (in which he is attempting to appeal), and the other officers involved in the case —Jon Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove— have been placed on administrative reassignment. None of the officers have been arrested or face criminal charges. 

I don’t have the range or the right to say what justice for Breonna Taylor looks like. No outcome could ever constitute her life being taken. No punishment or further lawful changes made will overpower the fact that BREONNA TAYLOR SHOULD STILL BE HERE. I cannot fathom her family’s pain. Still, as grief stricken as they are, they continue in the fight to honor her legacy while also working tirelessly to put an end to wrongful deaths at the hands of police. Since this case has become public knowledge, the public is still actively demanding justice both on and offline. The murder of Breonna Taylor took place two months before George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, and so we see how crucial it is to discuss the intersectionality of  #SayHerName (a movement to amplify the voices of Black women who fall victim to police) and #BlackLivesMatter, as it calls attention to gendered police brutality against Black women specifically, a conversation in which we are slighted, as cis-het Black men are made the face of victimhood.  George Floyd should still be here. George Floyd’s life more than mattered. It would be such a disservice to say that society’s treatment and discourse surrounding these cases have been equal. When it comes to the insensitive memes that have been circulating about Breonna Taylor’s case, social media users’ particular behavior in regard to this Black woman’s death is unprecedented.

A meme is an image or video that represents the thoughts and feelings of a specific audience. While social media is a platform for communication, memes are a way of expressing a culturally relevant idea, with most simply being captioned photos intended to elicit humor. “Meme-ing,” the memeification of, or to “memeify” is the process of forming an internet meme out of something. Though supposedly meant to draw greater attention to the case, these posts have also succeeded in making Breonna Taylor’s death an online trend. Hearing or seeing the same thing over and over again makes it much easier to tune it out and become desensitized. Turning Breonna Taylor’s case into a meme dehumanizes her and makes everyone desensitized to her death, no matter how good the intentions might have been at first. Breonna Taylor is not an Instagram caption. Breonna Taylor is not a trendy topic for performative allyship/activism.  Calling for justice with the arrest of her killers is not something quirky, catchy, or humorous you sneak into your recipes and to-do lists. Calling for justice, a foreign concept in a country that dishes out injustice after injustice to marginalized groups, should never be mixed with these failed attempts at being clever. There is nothing witty about a Black woman, woken by the incompetence and carelessness of law enforcement, and brutally murdered in her own home. I believe we all have enough sense to know that nothing about this calls for meme-culture’s internet consumption; and for those who do not, find it quickly before further traumatizing Black women who often feel ignored in this battle for civil rights, Black people who are at risk of dying at the hands of police every single day, and most importantly, Breonna Taylor’s loved ones who truly deserve far better.

Much like the memeification of Breonna Taylor’s death, Megan Thee Stallion’s trauma being turned into like-bait and viral memes shows a concerning and problematic truth about how unprotected Black women truly are. Torey Lanez, a cis-het Black male rapper shot Megan Thee Stallion, the award-winning Houston rap-girl on the rise last month as she attempted to escape an already escalating altercation. Responses to Megan Thee Stallion’s assault, when she wasn’t being called a liar and victim-blamed, were sick, cruel jokes that circulated nonstop as meme-culture has the capability to do, especially in a society that has always perpetuated misogynoir. Members of her own community (the same community that has no problem sexualizing her on a daily basis) tormented her and insisted there must have been a reason why she was harmed (as if countless statistics that show Black women, cis and trans, being victims of senseless violence perpetrated by cis-het Black men don’t exist); while it was absolute *crickets* from her non-Black fans, the same ones who constantly appropriate her music and culture for clout. Only being 25 and giving the industry all she’s got time and time again, not long after losing both her mother (her only parent after losing her father as well) and grandmother in the same month, Megan tweeted the heartbreaking message, “Black women are so unprotected & we hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others w/o considering our own. It might be funny to y’all on the internet and just another messy topic for you to talk about but this is my real life and I’m real life hurt and traumatized.” What this situation shows us is that we live in a society that does not believe Black women deserve sympathy, protection or even the benefit of the doubt. We live in a society that sexualizes, dehumanizes and exploits Black women while, ironically, shouting that we can/will save this world. 

I’m tired of the masses turning a blind eye to the correlation between the viral, internet abuses of Breonna Taylor and Megan Thee Stallion. The word tired could never suffice as I, as a Black woman, know too well of society’s ability to tarnish my legacy once I am gone; and I, as a Black woman, can already attest to society’s attempts at tarnishing while I am still here. I shouldn’t have to explain how seeing the memeification of our plight makes me feel and to be quite frank, I have no tangible proof of the aforementioned masses giving a flying fuck either way. Yet, here I am, telling you that the mockery of our deaths and the mockery of our lives not only go hand in hand, but also have never stopped being detrimental to the livelihood of Black women, and put us at risk every single day. When it comes to Black women’s plight, it does not need to be memed, and absolutely should not be shared by those who don’t identify as such, especially when these very same people add to our plight in the first place. Scrolling past our trauma that has been morphed into shareable, digestible (and at times, extremely tacky) content is always a trigger, a constant reminder that whether dead or alive, Black women are only given whatever amount of compassion society decides we deserve; depending on whichever side of the metaphorical bed people wake up on. It breaks my heart every time I see or hear Black women say, “We all we got.” It breaks my heart every time it’s proven true. It is not a coincidence that the death of a dark-skinned Black woman and the deliberate harm of another, two women from different walks of life, have been exploited and made a mockery of with memes and crass commentary; as violence against women (Black women especially) is desensitized around the clock. The memeification of Black women’s plight in response to both of these incidents shows that we’re ridiculed in life, in death, and in the survival between. So, though calling for equality often feels like shouting into the void, I shout for us. I will never stop shouting.