Opinion | Harris must take the lead on Sonya Massey’s police killing

Although Massey posed no obvious threat (a breakfast bar separated the kitchen from the living room, where Grayson pointed his gun), the deputy shot the unarmed mother in the face. Seconds later, the video shows, Grayson refused to call for medical help.

There is something particularly heinous about the mix of murder and the mundane. Black women are killed in their homes by police officers while performing mundane domestic tasks. Massey, wearing a bathrobe and pajamas, was shot as she took a pot off the stove. Atatiana Jefferson was killed in Fort Worth in 2019 while playing video games with her nephew. In 2020, Breonna Taylor was killed by police officers in Louisville executing a no-knock search warrant. She had been sleeping next to her boyfriend.

A 2020 study published by the Washington Post found that nearly 250 women have been killed by police in the United States since 2015 – 89 of them in their own homes or in the home of someone they knew.

Grayson was fired, arrested and charged with first-degree murder and aggravated assault with a firearm. He pleaded not guilty. His employment history includes one short stint after another in the U.S. Army and various law enforcement agencies, but his lack of commitment never stopped him from landing another job that required him to wear a badge, a gun and give orders. People in cities across the country see this as a systemic failure, even if those in power cannot. Outraged citizens marched and held vigils last weekend to demand justice for Massey.

As activist and educator Alicia T. Crosby said in 2020, Black women killed by police deserve uprisings too.

Vice President Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has a choice to make: Does she side with the protesters or the powers that be? Since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Harris moved quickly to clinch her nomination, her fellow liberals have been railing against those who spoil the fun by demanding clear policy action on the issue. Amid the luscious labor of Harris’ honeymoon, they are reveling in the excitement that a Black and South Asian woman can become president. At the same time, they are mocking those of us who would push Harris to take strong, humane positions at home and abroad. Wait until she defeats Donald Trump, until she takes office, until, until, until. But as James Baldwin once so aptly asked, “How much time do you want for your progress?”

The harsh reality is that police brutality and racism against black women never take a holiday.

Knowing that the Massey case was important, Harris called the Massey family on Friday. In the call, NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor said: Harris reportedly mentioned the George Floyd Policing Act, which aims to ban racial and religious profiling in police, reform immunity, and ban chokeholds and no-knock search warrants. That was cold comfort, as the bill has been stalled in Congress for years.

That is America’s problem, and has been for generations. The killing of black people is not seen for what it is: a crime. It is about “race problems,” about “police training problems,” about black sheep among otherwise good public servants. Only very rarely is the shooting of unarmed people by the police seen as murder, as the ultimate failure of law and order. Because in this country the law killed black people to maintain the racial order.

As a former prosecutor, Harris has a reputation as a law-and-order advocate who can appeal to voters on the center and the right. During her time as California’s attorney general, she did not support legislation that would have given the Justice Department the authority to investigate police shootings. Harris’ presidential campaign is using her past to show that she is not afraid to take on criminals – including, of course, felon Donald Trump.

But will “Kamala the Cop” take on criminal cops?

There is no denying that black candidates at the national level must take a hard line on racial issues. But they must be on the right side of the line. Although wracked with grief, Massey’s family said they would enthusiastically vote for Harris. The vice president must earn that vote by committing to addressing racial issues and political brutality in her future term. That is the least Massey and other black women killed by police deserve.