It’s been two years since Boko Haram abducted nearly 300 Nigerian girls from their Chibok town, dooming them to a fate few have cared to imagine.
For a while, a social media campaign kept the girls’ plight in our news foreground. For its criticism, #BringBackOurGirls was at least effective in its ability to attract media attention, which earned the region nuanced coverage.
It was the combination of social media activism and the context that journalism provided that helped U.S. news consumers connect with the plight of those Nigerian school girls. I’m waiting for news organizations to give the same level of scrutiny, context and analysis to the violence faced by black women and girls at the hands of police in areas that are closer to home.
The face of police brutality in the U.S. has been a black male one.
But a recent trial and police violence caught on video reveal that black and brown women and girls are additionally brutalized in ways that men often aren't. And the data show that police incidents involving women of color occur at a disproportionately high level compared with media coverage.
Since the death of Florida teen Trayvon Martin in 2012 — which gave national momentum to the movement that would eventually be known as #blacklivesmatter — more than 20 women of color have been killed in police-related incidents. While media coverage has focused primarily on Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in Texas in July, the less popular #sayhername campaign has exposed multitudes of other women who have either died while in police custody or as the result of interactions with law enforcement. Their names are less familiar: Shantel Davis. Shelly Frey. Kayla Moore. Miriam Carey.
Coverage of police brutality rarely includes incidents of sexual violence. Yet sexual misconduct is one of the most frequently logged complaints against police, according to an AP investigation published in 2015. The year-long investigation revealed that 1,000 officers were booted off of police forces during a six-year period for various forms of sexual misconduct including rape and sodomy.
The 263-year prison sentence faced by Daniel Holtzclaw, a former Oklahoma City officer, reveals the horrors that some women have endured from officers who are allowed to continue suspected sexual misconduct without consequence. During Holtzclaw's trial, women testified that he forced them to perform oral sex during traffic stops and raped them (one woman said that he handcuffed her to a hospital bed; another woman testified that Holtzclaw raped her in her bedroom). His targets were black.
Black women and girls are also more likely to end up in prison than their white female counterparts. Black girls are punished in school more frequently than white girls, often for the same behaviors. Data collected by Policing the USA shows that 1 in 18 black girls born in 2001 will likely end up in prison. The statistic is 1 in 111 for white girls. School suspension rates are also higher for black girls than for white girls, according to Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected, a joint study by the African American Policy Forum and the Center for Interdisciplinary and Social Policy Studies.
Videos reveal but also victimize
In news speak, user-generated content is unparalleled at making the human connection. Cellphone videos captured by eyewitnesses who were on the scene when reporters were not have helped create stories that empower journalists to provide follow-up, demand accountability and pursue justice.
But media is falling down on the job of explaining just how these videos impact more than the victims and the perpetrators they show. We’ve seen videos of females being assaulted at the hands of police officers and even at political rallies, with little consequence, and, I fear, desensitization. Few are sounding an alarm about the lingering effects on families and communities of repeated public exposure to violence against women and girls.
A study published in 2014 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, concluded that frequent, repeated exposure to violent images can cause anxiety. Other studies done long before this one made links between exposure to violence and aggression.
In July 2014, video surfaced of Marlene Pinnock, a homeless woman who was pinned under a California highway patrol officer who punched her repeatedly in the face.
In June 2015, more video surfaced of a 15-year-old, bikini-clad Dajerria Becton being manhandled and straddled by a McKinney, Texas police officer at a pool party.
In October, a police officer was caught on video flipping a South Carolina school girl out of her chair and dragging her across a classroom.
Just last week, a Texas school girl, 12, was seen on tape being body-slammed by a campus police officer.
The loop of bruised and beaten black and brown female bodies that have become part of our reporting and consumption habits must have an effect on a public in which a large percentage of medical students and residents falsely believe that black people are more impervious to pain than whites, according to a recent study.
Improving media's role
The same media that amplifies videos that often bring perpetrators to accountability, has a responsibility to discuss the implications of broadcasting such violence. For each “shocking” video, ethical, responsible reporting demands that we contextualize what audiences have seen.
Simply showing the occasional video isn't enough. It’s media’s responsibility to report the facts about such violence. Reported statistics on state violence, which includes police brutality, too frequently reflect the experiences of men and blot out the impact of such crimes against women of color.
Visceral images neglect to tell the entire story, nor do they explain how the victim, the aggressor, and our society arrived at such a violent moment.
Unless the videos are used with discretion, and paired with ethic of care for the public-health impact of such exposure, user-generated “content” depicting violence against women adds to the lessening of respect for women overall, not just at the hands of police.
We can do better. We did better in our reporting of efforts to bring back the Chibok girls. We may not be able to re-wind the tape to stop the assaults against women and girls at home, but we do not have to compound the problem by desensitizing audiences in the name of making news.
Meredith Clark is an assistant professor at the University of North Texas.
