The Murder of Breonna Taylor: A Modern Feminist Tragedy

This country’s reaction to Breonna Taylor’s murder has been inherently sexist and intertwined with her being a black woman. Taylor, an EMT, was shot in her own home five times as she. Police officers entered the house on a search warrant for a drug case after midnight even though the main suspect had already been arrested. Forcing their way into the apartment, they reportedly failed to identify themselves despite being required to because of their warrant, leading Taylor and her boyfriend to believe that her ex-boyfriend, the man police were looking for, was breaking and entering. After calling out to police and receiving no answer, her boyfriend shot back at who they thought were burglars. Police then opened fire, seriously wounding Taylor. An ambulance was not on the scene of the raid, which goes against standard raid procedure, and the ambulance was not called until much later. This happened on March 13, 2020 (New York Times). 

Before and upon entering the apartment the police made the first assumption based on gender of this story. As Adichie said in her TED Talk “We Should All be Feminists,” we assume that men are inherently guilty and dangerous (We Should All Be Feminists). The police entered her house aggressively, looking for her ex-boyfriend, a drug dealer. Would they have been so aggressive upon entering if they had been looking for a woman selling drugs, or even a white man? Black men are seen as dangerous, inherently guilty, and worthy of suspicion. Would the police entering her house on that fateful night have knocked again if it had been a woman they were looking for, allowing those inside to realize that it was the police and not a burglar entering their home? Would they have given them the benefit of the doubt when they didn’t answer the door? The identity of the suspect as a man, and especially a Black man, made the police automatically defensive. Would Breonna be alive today if they had not assumed guilt? 

When Taylor was shot, she was not given the medical treatment she needed. Even in her moment of death she was overlooked. Corners later found that it was unlikely that she would have survived and that she likely died just minutes after being shot. Police actually sent away the ambulance that must be present at all raids (New York Times). If they had valued the lives of black people more would the ambulance have stayed? Would someone have called 911 for Breonna sooner? 

The aftermath of this tragedy showed the most bias based on gender. Similar examples of police killing people in their own homes can show the sexist and racist nature of the reaction to Breonna’s killing. An example of this is the shooting of Justine Damond by a police officer, a white woman in Minneapolis. She was a white woman who called the police to report This officer was quickly convicted of Second-degree manslaughter and third-degree murder (Wikipedia). Another example of an officer killing someone in their own home was when off-duty Amber Guyger killed Botham Jean, a black man, in his own apartment in 2019. She, like Damond’s killer, was convicted of murder (ABC News). Breonna’s killers face no repercussions apart from administrative consequences. Her identity as a Black person and woman, and the intersection of both, caused society, prosecutors, and others to disregard her death and make excuses for the lack of justice. 

Black women’s issues have been especially looked over for years with Sojourner Truth speaking about this disparity in her 1851 “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech. She talks about the double standard for Black and white women and how Black women are seen as less than white women (Truth). Her speech is still very applicable today since black women are treated as inferior. Black women’s lives are valued less than the lives of Black men and white women as we can see from the tragic story of Breonna Taylor’s death. 

Works Cited

ABC News. 

abcnews.go.com/US/death-innocent-man-timeline-wrong-apartment-murder-trial/story?id=65938727. Accessed 8 Sept. 2020.

New York Times. www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylor-police.html. Accessed 8 Sept. 2020.

Truth, Sojourner. Speech. National Park Service, 1851, 

www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm. Accessed 8 Sept. 2020.

"We Should All Be Feminists." youtube.com, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg3umXU_qWc. 

     Accessed 8 Sept. 2020.

Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Justine_Damond. Accessed 8 Sept. 2020.