On Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Black People Don’t Even Have Basic Safety: How YOU Can Prevent Another Breonna Taylor
Dr. Taharee A. Jackson, Ph.D.
DrTaharee Consulting
September 23, 2020
Today I spent time with a sports coach who is helping me navigate a severe foot injury. This young, spunky White woman is singlehandedly responsible for any degree of physicality I enjoy, and she is the only reason I leave my home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Me: I could have come sooner today because I finished early at the MVA! (Motor Vehicle Administration)
Spunky Sports Coach: Why did you physically go to the MVA during a pandemic!?
Me: Because I needed to renew my vehicle registration. And I’M BLACK, so I have to stay on top of things like that. If I get pulled over for even a minor infraction, I may not live to tell about it.
Spunky Sports Coach: …
Although there was a brief moment where she paused to absorb what I was saying, Spunky Sports Coach ultimately thanked me for emphasizing that I am Black (I am multiracial, but in the land of hypodescent, what matters most is that I present as Black), because it was a candid reminder that we don’t have the same experiences with law enforcement.
And that something as simple as an expired registration could kill me.
In a fit of cruel irony, today the entire City of Louisville, Kentucky braced itself for what most Black people assumed would be some perversion of justice. The entire city was cordoned off, boarded up, and locked down as we awaited the criminal fate of the officers who stormed first-responder Breonna Taylor’s home and violently ended her life as she lay asleep in bed.
As a multiracial woman mixed with Black, I know better than to allow my registration to expire…or leave a faulty tail light unattended…or drive in a wealthy White neighborhood too late in the evening. I am well aware of how to interact with the police as deferentially as possible. How to have my license and registration in my hands — both visible — when they approach my window. I know how to use the words “Yes, Sir,” “Yes Ma’am,” and “Officer” multiple times. I know how, throughout my interaction, to apologize profusely for whatever I have or have NOT done wrong. I know how to protect myself as best I can during a traffic stop for a moving violation, but how to protect myself from the police while I’m asleep in my own bed?
OH MY GOD.
Today we learned that of the three officers serving a no-knock warrant at the home of Breonna Taylor, killing her as she slept, not a single one has been charged with murder. Although this woman’s life was tragically cut short as she lay motionless, defenseless, and unaware of her surroundings, a sole officer was charged with “first-degree wanton endangerment.”
That stings.
People often wonder why a city like Louisville would even have to brace itself for protest, unrest, and outrage. There are those who are quick to denounce whatever “riots” may ensue, but simultaneously pose incessant questions about what preceded the murder of Breonna Taylor. These are many of the same people who ask, “What happened before the cameras started recording?” or “What did she do before she was murdered?”
Black people are the only people who get blamed for their own murders. Not unlike women who are often blamed for their own rapes.
Just before I traveled to my appointment with Spunky Sports Coach today, I was engaged in a series of conversations with my website developer and brand strategist (www.heyLaurenLane.com). One of the exercises required me to revisit Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which is widely applicable psychological framework describing our human needs and how we make decisions based on whether or not those needs are met.
The first rung of the hierarchy consists of a bifurcated “basic” needs level, which includes the physiological needs of food, water, warmth, and rest. The second rung constitutes the other half of our “basic” need structure: safety and security. The pyramidal framework then travels upward to the psychological needs of belonging, love, and esteem, with the final and highest rung describing self-actualization and the freedom to fulfill one’s full potential. In other words, to become whatever you want to be according to your own desire.
Given my own background in psychology and human development, I had seen this graphic many times before. As a former classroom teacher and professor, I employed this framework time and time again to describe how students could in no way focus on learning or the highest forms of achievement if they did not first have their basic and intermediary needs met.
What struck me so harshly today is that I realized, for the first time in my life, that Black people in the United States don’t even enjoy the basic human needs of safety and security in our own country. The fact that we have to live in constant terror of losing our lives to the very people charged with protecting us means that we don’t even make it past the second rung on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
And that hurts.
When I think of my Spunky Sports Coach and how she readily accepted my frank and candid explanation of why I found it necessary to literally risk my life by traveling to a crowded motor vehicle office just to save my life at a later juncture, it encouraged me to think through how we as a country might create the conditions under which Black people and ALL people have equal opportunities to reach Maslow’s highest level.
Right now, Black and Black-presenting people are fighting for their lives, not just at routine traffic stops, but on low wage-earning essential jobs during a pandemic. We are fighting for our lives as disproportionate COVID-19 sufferers who faced myriad pre-existing conditions and poor healthcare long before the Coronavirus ever came for us. We are fighting for our lives in schools that are primarily online, but because many of us have no access to intergenerational wealth, we are crowded in public fast food restaurants and (alongside our Brown contemporaries) sitting on the sidewalks outside Taco Bell trying to “borrow” high-speed internet, free Wi-Fi, and hotspots. We are fighting for our lives in corporate positions and in C-suite offices where people are still requesting to touch our hair, complimenting us on our articulation as Black people, and asking us if we wrote that.
Breonna Taylor is, unfortunately, no longer fighting for her life because hers was already taken. What lies below, however, is a practical guide for how YOU can not only prevent wanton police violence against African Americans throughout this country, but the everyday violence that steals our peace, limits our freedom, and crushes our spirits.
If only YOU can prevent forest fires, then only YOU can prevent persistent, virulent racism. Here’s how:
1. Listen to the Counterstories of People of Color
Donald Trump just literally “banned” antiracism training and federal diversity training efforts rooted in critical race theory. Little does he know, a key element of this framework is simply taking the time to listen to the stories and “counterstories” of Black people and People of Color who experience racism on a daily basis, often with fatal results. My Spunky Sports Coach did not sign up for a conversation on race and disparities in policing today, but by allowing me to honestly express myself — and my veritable reasons for not wanting my vehicle registration to expire — she became that much more aware of how deadly it can be to interact with the police as a Black person in this country.
Many White Americans do not regularly interact with African Americans as part of their intimate friendship circles and social groups. If you know or work alongside someone of color, make space for them to describe how they are feeling in this moment and listen to their racialized experiences with open ears. If you are listening to refute, rebut, or rationalize the individual, institutional, cultural, structural, and sociohistorical racism they experience, then please wait until you are ready to receive a perspective that may controvert your own. But if you ready to listen to understand, absorb, and allow their counterstories to bear influence on the way you experience law enforcement and racism in this country for yourself, they by all means, pull up a chair.
2. Get in on “The Conversation”
If you are a Black person in this country, especially a Black male, there is a 99.9% chance that a parent, family member, or elder has sat you down for “The Conversation.” This is when someone who deeply loves you and cares for your life and safety explains that under ALL circumstances:
a) You will be surveilled, patrolled, stopped, and pulled over at rates far higher than White people.
b) You will be treated as a guilty criminal even if you are unarmed and non-threatening. Your color ALONE is the threat.
c) You are to keep BOTH HANDS VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES so police officers cannot claim that you were “reaching for a gun, knife, or other weapon.” This is crucial and potentially life-saving.
d) You should have your license and registration ready, fully visible, and in your hands BEFORE the police officer approaches your vehicle. If you reach for your glove box or purse, or make “any sudden moves,” it could be the end of you. If you MUST reach into your glove box or purse, you MUST ANNOUNCE your intended motions and receive confirmation from the officer that you have permission to move your hands inside your own vehicle. If you do not receive permission to reach into something or move your hands freely, you are absolutely to “keep your hands where they can see them.” Period.
e) You are to agree, defer, apologize profusely, cooperate, and show EVERY physical and verbal act of deference to a police officer. You are to refer to them as “Officer” and say “Yes, Sir” or “Yes, Ma’am” (my apologies for the binary nature of these terms) as often as possible to demonstrate that you are compliant, non-threatening, and respectful of authority.
f) You are NOT to disagree, refuse, ask to see a badge, request a badge number, or in any way anger the officer. If any of your behavior is perceived as noncompliant, dangerous, or threatening, you may be murdered on the spot without legal consequence for the murdering officer. The officer’s testimony is more credible than yours — even if body camera or dashboard camera evidence substantiates your claims — and the officer is always right.
g) You are to follow ALL instructions from the police officer without question. You are to remain in the vehicle, exit the vehicle with both your hands in full view, lie down on the ground, and make NO sudden movements.
Any deviation from these topics of The Conversation will result in your being killed. Most likely followed by no charges or criminal indictment of the officer, and most certainly with reinstatement of their position once they have concluded the desk duty or paid leave to which they were assigned while investigating your murder.
Any questions?
If you continue to be confused about “The Conversation,” which happens among heavy-hearted parents and Black children every night in this country, please read Bryonn Bain’s “Walking White Black” and the Black Bill of Rights here.
That should clear things up.
3. Understand that the Law is the Whitest Institution in the United States
Dr. David Stovall, co-author of From Education to Incarceration: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline, speaks eloquently about how there is quite literally only one institution in this country that is more White-dominant than education: the law. From the arresting officers, to law enforcement writ large, to prosecutors, to judges, to juries, to lawmakers, to the Supreme Court, to the Presidency, there is no institution in this country that is essentially Whiter than the law. If that is true, then we must ask ourselves how it is in any way possible that police officers the nation over can surveil, jail, and murder Black people in the streets and in their beds almost without consequence. And most importantly, how can we change this? Where does this change live?
Police officers enforce the law, but they are not ABOVE the law.
How can we as a country come together to reform every part of the law such that another Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Trayvonn Martin, Tamir Rice, or any other nameless, faceless, unrecorded Black person’s murder is no longer possible? I would suggest that we first embrace the realization that every level of the law must be diversified. From a representative police force, to prosecutors, to public defenders, to attorneys, to judges, to juries, to Supreme Court Justices, to Congressmen, to the Presidency. We must vote in local and national elections, support candidates whose life experiences more closely resemble those for whom they are creating and enforcing laws, and recognize that the scales of justice will never be colorblind if there is literally no color to observe in seats of power.
Furthermore, if “the law” is to remain primarily White until we can diversify it at each level, how can we better support the officers, attorneys, lawmakers, and politicians at its helm? I would suggest a serious investment in antiracist, anti-oppressive professional learning. Everywhere. For Everyone.
4. Support Antiracist Training, Irrespective of What the Law Says
When I was presenting my antiracism research at a conference in Colorado, I stumbled upon a protest in downtown Denver. One of the signs read, “Sometimes it’s the law that’s illegal.”
As a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Consultant, I am exhausted. At the beginning of the pandemic I was first tasked with seminars, webinars, and trainings on Anti-Asian racism, since our own President continues to refer to the Coronavirus as “The Kung Flu.” We are well into a global pandemic and his racist tropes are unrelenting.
In his latest war on justice, truth, and peace, he has issued a mandate essentially banning antiracist training within federal agencies. He has deemed it “Anti-American” and “unpatriotic.” He has, in no uncertain terms, declared war on my entire profession.
The beauty of this country is that even after this president issued his anti-antiracism training and anti-antiracism curriculum decree, federal agencies, schools, and organizations of all ilk are rightfully seeking training to address longstanding workplace racism, systemic oppression, and a criminally overdue conversation about how to treat African Americans and all manner of minoritized groups with dignity, civility, and respect.
If the leader of your organization is actively anti-antiracist, I challenge you to stand up and speak up. I encourage you to “go your own way” and invite speakers, trainers, and anyone who can grow your capacity and further the dialogue at your workplace. Even if you assemble the few individuals in your organization who are outraged, dedicated to the work of antiracism, or just downright curious and open, that would be better than allowing this moment to pass.
What a luxury to study racism as opposed to experiencing it each and every day of your life.
And what a privilege to have a “dialogue” on racism when people are literally dying from it in the streets and in their beds.
5. Be Permanent Partners. Not Temporary Allies.
When I was discussing inclusive diversity with a brilliant Black woman within the intelligence community, she noted that the greatest fear of Black people in this moment is that people will be interested in our murders and plights for a moment, and then take flight.
She quipped, “We are not looking for temporary allies. We are looking for PERMANENT PARTNERS.”
As a consultant, I meticulously find, read, preview, cull, and assemble entire reading lists designed to place people on a trajectory of lifelong learning about racism, antiracism, whiteness, identity, and solidarity. But these things take time, and I am exhausted at the end of collating such readings and resources.
As my fellow scholar and Critical Whiteness Studies expert Dr. Cheryl Matias has put forth,
“Don’t ask me for readings if you are unwilling to learn.”
If you are in ANY way shaken, disappointed, or simply curious about why an entire city, or an entire people, would be outraged by the outcome of Breonna Taylor’s case, then consider becoming a permanent partner in the struggle for racial equity and social justice. As Black people and People of Color, we are not only terrified of losing our lives during routine traffic stops and in our beds.
We are terrified of temporary allies who are only interested in antiracism for this fleeting moment and then quickly return to their happy White lives.
Only WE, together, can prevent another Breonna Taylor. Another Black life lost without consequence.
Please join us.
According to Maslow, we’re not safe yet.
Dr. Taharee Jackson, Ph.D. is Founder and Tonesetter-In-Chief of DrTaharee Consulting. A former classroom teacher, professor, and antiracism researcher, she has served as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Consultant since 2004. Dr. Jackson is a speaker, trainer, and author of “I’m White and I’m Outraged by Ahmaud Arbery’s Murder. Now What? A Practical Guide for White Allies and Accomplices,” and “COVID-19 and Videoclassism: Implicit Bias, Videojudgment, and Why I’m Terrified to Have You Look Over My Shoulder.”