How Black women coined the ‘say her name’ rallying cry before Biden’s State of the Union address

Marjorie Taylor Greene wore a T-shirt to Thursday night time’s State of the Union deal with that carried a seemingly easy message: Say Her Identify.

The hard-line Republican congresswoman from Georgia, who was decked out in a crimson MAGA hat and different regalia, borrowed the phrase from Black racial justice activists who’ve been calling consideration to the extrajudicial deaths of Black ladies by the hands of police and vigilantes.

Nonetheless, Greene used the rallying cry to efficiently goad President Joe Biden into saying the title Laken Riley, a nursing pupil from Georgia whose demise is now on the middle of U.S. immigration debate. An immigrant from Venezuela, who entered the U.S. illegally, has been arrested in Riley’s case and charged with homicide.

Riley’s title is a rallying cry for Republicans criticizing the president’s dealing with of the document surge of immigrants coming into the nation by way of the united statesMexico border.

The origins of the ‘Say Her Identify’ rallying cry date again nicely earlier than Greene donned the T-shirt. Who first coined the phrase ‘Say Her Identify’ in protest?

The phrase was popularized by civil rights activist, regulation professor and govt director of the African American Coverage Institute Kimberlé Crenshaw in 2015, following the demise of Sandra Bland. Bland, a 28-year-old Black girl, was discovered lifeless in a Texas jail cell a number of days after she was arrested throughout a site visitors cease. Her household questioned the circumstances of her demise and the validity of the site visitors cease and the next 12 months settled a wrongful demise lawsuit with the police division.

Black ladies are statistically extra possible than different ladies to witness and expertise police violence, together with demise, which can be linked to heightened psychological stress and several other associated destructive well being outcomes.

“In every single place, we see the appropriation of progressive and inclusionary ideas in an effort to devalue, distort and suppress the actions they’ve been created to advance,” Crenshaw mentioned in a press release to The Related Press. “When most individuals solely hear about these concepts from those who search to repurpose and debase them, then our skill to talk fact to energy is additional restricted.”

Greene’s appropriation of the phrase “undermines civil rights actions and pushes our democracy nearer to the sting,” Crenshaw wrote in her assertion. “The misuse of those ideas by others who search to silence us have to be resisted if we’re to stay steadfast in our advocacy for a totally inclusive and shared future.”

Tamika Mallory, a racial justice advocate and creator, mentioned Laken Riley deserves justice, however on this case she doesn’t assume that conservatives are being real once they use #SayHerName. “In the event that they had been, they wouldn’t be utilizing language that they declare to not favor,” she mentioned. “They demonize our language, they demonize our organizing type, however they co-opt the language at any time when they really feel it’s a political instrument.”Who’re the opposite Black ladies included in ‘Say Her Identify’?

Crenshaw and others started utilizing the phrase to attract consideration to instances by which Black ladies are topic to police brutality. In 2020, the hashtag #SayHerName helped put extra public scrutiny on the capturing demise of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black girl in Louisville, KY who was shot and killed in her dwelling throughout a botched police raid.

The marketing campaign was based to interrupt the silence round Black ladies, ladies, and femmes whose lives have been taken by police, Crenshaw mentioned.

“The listing of ladies killed in deadly encounters with regulation enforcement and whose households proceed to demand justice is lengthy. Tanisha Anderson, Michelle Shirley, Sandra Bland, Miriam Carey, Michelle Cusseaux, Shelly Frey, Breonna Taylor, Korryn Gaines, Kayla Moore, Atatiana Jefferson, and India Kager are simply among the many names we uplift — ladies whose tales have too typically in any other case gone untold. We should name out and resist this try to commandeer this marketing campaign to serve an extremist right-wing agenda.”

____

Graham Lee Brewer is an Oklahoma Metropolis-based member of AP’s Race and Ethnicity staff.

Associated