On The Death Of Sandra Bland And Our Vulnerable Bodies

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Roxanne Gay, in her Op-Ed piece “On the Death of Sandra Bland and Our Vulnerable Bodies” that featured in The New York Times, takes a stand position regarding the treatment of Black women, or black people in general, in America. However, the injustice illustrated by Gay is not the one from one civilian to another but rather from the justice systems originally designed to keep all Americans safe notwithstanding their skin color nor racial affiliation. According to Gay’s piece, the crimes that the so-called justice systems perpetrate range from unlawful harassment, incarceration, and even extra-judicial slayings. Gay takes her viewpoint in the piece by offering many instances of when and where the justice systems have treated Black people awful …show more content…
Encinia, in Waller County, Texas, pulled over Ms. Bland on a routine traffic stop. The routine traffic stop turned grisly upon the officer realizing that the person on the wheel was a Black woman. The whole, incident, of which most was caught on camera, reveals the antagonism that existed between these two people of different races. According to Gay, the whole confrontation was nothing to do with the laws breached but rather a racial matter in which the officer was simply irritated by Ms. Bland’s skin color. Apparently, the officer was irritated by the confident tone portrayed by Ms. Bland, which he perceived as utterly offensive. Further, the officer forced Ms. Bland into a situation of harassment instigating her to resist arrest account of violation of human rights only to be forced into handcuffs. In her position, Gay openly feels that Ms. Bland was treated as less of a human being, which led her into jail where she committed suicide due to depression. As by Gay’s account, the situation in which Ms. Bland found herself and others portray the crimes and injustice that black people face. Gay even tells of a situation in which she and his brother were pulled over on account of the latter resembling an escaped convict. This terrible trend even extends to emergency situations in which only white people and their children are given evacuation priorities over the black

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