A Gaping Wound

My heart is heavy as I grasp for the words to discuss yet another death of a Black person at the hands of those who are supposed to serve and protect. Walter Wallace Jr. was killed in Philadelphia during a mental health crisis by police officers that were called to assist. He was a Black man with a mental illness, and his needs were responded to with cruelty and violence that is all too familiar, resulting in the wholly unjust outcome of his death.

This is unacceptable. Walter Wallace Jr.’s death is unacceptable. The cruelty demonstrated by the police officers who killed him is unacceptable. The vast continuum of dehumanizing experiences ranging from verbal microaggressions to inequitable hiring practices to police brutality and even murder of Black people every day of their lives is unacceptable. The fact that this is one in a long litany of names of Black people who have been killed this way is unacceptable.

I have been struggling for words to respond to this enormous gaping wound left by the death of a young man who is my older daughter’s age. I sit imagining what his mother must be feeling, what his pregnant wife who told the police that her husband was having a mental health crisis, must be feeling. His wife is ushering a new life into this world as one life so dear to her was brutally extinguished. I imagine what his children must be feeling, grappling with the unfathomable loss of their father. His son said Walter “was teaching him how to be a man,” and I mourn those lessons and so many more that Walter Wallace Jr. was never able to teach.

This cannot continue. There must be a reckoning with this continual assault on the Black community and a willingness to change the power structures that allow it to continue. Law enforcement and public safety offices have yet to be radically transformed, and this transformation is long overdue. There is work to be done, and incredible community activists and leaders have been leading the way in articulating how it ought to be done and focusing on the needs of the Black community. I am grateful to them for their labor and committed to uplifting their voices and their work.

But right now, as a mother whose children are the center of my universe, I grieve with Walter’s family. Today, I grieve as a brown woman who stands in solidarity with the Black community whose pain is palpable and heartbreaking. My deepest condolences to his family and to Philadelphians all trying to cope with another reminder of a broken system that keeps failing us.

May Walter’s life be celebrated and may we all work to fix these systems so that Black mothers no longer have to fear for the safety of their children because of a world that refuses to acknowledge them as brilliant and treat them as human. More than anything, may these words not be empty promises or prayers; may they be one of many catalysts for action and change.

Rest in Power Walter Wallace Jr.

Reviewed and edited by my daughters.

~ Nina