“Her death, like her father’s to some extent, is another reminder of what it means to embody and to carry in the body the full experience of being Black in the United States.”

Ms. Garner’s death means much and it’s impossible for me to distance her death from her father’s death. They were two different people and if I can find one common line between them, it is, for me, that neither of them should have died when they died. Her death, like her father’s to some extent, is another reminder of what it means to embody and to carry in the body the full experience of being Black in the United States.

There is immense pleasure in being Black and there is a corresponding shadow side that is inexplicable despite the best linguistic tools. Death comes for everyone, and it seems that death comes so soon for those whose skin is along that gorgeous spectrum from cream to vanilla bean. The hands of those who are sworn to serve and protect or the low-lying pervasive threats of asthma and “high blood and sugar” as they were known in my childhood–the line of angels of death is long.

– Michael Washington meditating on the death of Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner who was killed by the NYPD.