By Anna Gibson

The number of Black women who die in police custody continues to climb. A video was recently released of 37-year-old Natasha McKenna, who died in police custody in early February of 2015. McKenna had suffered from schizophrenia since she was a teenager and was having an episode in prison. The 45-minute video shows her staggering out of her cell, completely naked and clearly confused as a group of fully armed men, in hazmat suits and shields, pull her to the ground. They then proceeded to administer 5000 volts to her 5’3, 160 lb. frame. She was later pulled off of life support, and the cause of her death was listed as “agitated excitation.”

by Stacia L. Brown for Buzzfeed

All we need now is a name. Nobody waits for a mugshot or allows media outlets to choose a photo of the slain anymore. The name of the victim — so often black, so often unarmed — is all we need to begin our search.

In mid-July, A Black woman in America lost her life under suspicious circumstances whilst in police custody. Her name is Sandra Bland. We know this thanks to the power that social media wields in its capacity to bring to light issues that would otherwise go unnoticed, particularly with regard to issues that affect Black people.

by Anna Gibson 

In the wake of the Sandra Bland case, the black community was outraged and prepared to take action against a system that continues to subject us to violence. They drag our teenage girls to the ground at pool parties. They shoot us for carrying skittles, or even knocking on doors. Despite this, we continue to fight against a culture that seems to get off on dehumanizing us then ignoring the consequences, claiming that we live in a “post racial society.”

by Danielle Stevens for This Bridge Called Our Health

I think some of the discourse emerging from these ‪#‎IfIDieInPoliceCustody and ‪#‎WhatHappenedToSandraBland‬ conversations are dangerously limited. Folks are saying “Sandra Bland was mentally sound” and “Black women like her would never commit suicide”, etc. Not only are we upholding precarious and dehumanizing ‘strong black woman’ archetypes that neglect to hold Black women in the fullness and breadth that we embody, but our failure to operate within a mental health & disability justice framework by making the assertion that Sandra Bland was ‘mentallly sound’ in order to prove that she did not commit suicide is a dangerous narrative that both devalues black people who navigate mental health difficulties and trauma and also erases their/our narratives from the conversation.