16 Likes
This was the story I woke up to this morning. Happened in Woodstock, just up the road from where I work. Well, that and this:
" After a closed-session discussion, the Elkton Town Council ultimately voted 5-1 Monday night to approve a permit that will allow a high school student-led Black Lives Matter protest on Wednesday. Plans for the event had touched off a social media-fueled controversy after a Facebook post calling for armed counter-protesters went viral over the past several days."
8 Likes
15 Likes
RIP.
10 Likes
10 Likes
Yup. Exactly.
12 Likes
The man found hanged in Houston isnât black and his family says that he was suicidal (a HuffPo reporter tweeted out wrong info).
That of course does not change the larger point that it seems unimaginable that a string of black men found hanged in public this week could be suicides.
7 Likes
14 Likes
Holy shit! One day later. What is going on?
3 Likes
Nuh-uh. Bullshit. These are not suicides.
7 Likes
As someone who has had emergency room visits post suicide attempts, has cut down a friend from a beam in their basement, and has spent far too much time in groups talking this kind of thing through with others who have attempted, this kind of mental illness erasure by neurotypical folx really doesnât hit right. Especially when you donât want to be discovered by family while attempting, when youâre trying everything to get out of this world, you donât think about the context, you just think about ending things. And idk how many of you have tried, but when you donât have access to a gun, hanging is a very very attractive prospect, especially in times as harrowing as these. Iâm not saying itâs impossible thereâs foul play here as pigs have been pulling this kind of shady shit forever, but finding it impossible to conceive of wanting your life to end that badly is a position of privilege in its own right. Totally willing to delete if this is ot/detracts from the point, but this has been stuck in my mind for a while.
1 Like
The issue isnt that Black people ânever kill themselvesâ or have a reason to feel suicidal.
Itâs that its highly unlikely that so many Black men would all actively choose hanging as a viable way of killing themselves, especially right now.
13 Likes
I have been trying to find data to back that up, and have come up with nothing. Data on methods of suicide in black men is just ridiculously sparse. Shocking, I know. Lots of info on white men, very little on blacks. Best I can find is the well known âMen choose violent methods more than women, black and white men choose firearms overall as the most favored method at roughly equal proportions.â I have to point out, just based on demographics, there has not been a rash of white men found hanging in trees. This alone should make the âthey all committed suicide in remarkably similar waysâ argument questionable.
14 Likes
Not surprising.
Iâm only speaking from personal lived experience, clearly.
That said, such experience tells me that people who want to end their own lives tend to choose methods that they think will be quick if not painless; and thereâs nothing âquick or painlessâ about hanging.
Just from a logical standpoint it makes no sense, let alone once you factor in the historical ramifications of lynchings.
12 Likes
Are you a black man?
7 Likes
Queer metis, and commenting on how suicidality in the media in general as well as in this instance. I understand well that my experience isnt valid to you as I have a different cultural background, but from my lived experience and that of others I know can at least state that hanging is a much more enticing prospect than a blade to your wrist when you canât find a firearm. Are you a black man?
Edit to say not at all trying to push the narrative that are all suicides or anything, just feel like thereâs often erasure/a lack of understanding of suicidality
She didnât say that. She was asking a question in order to get clarification⌠not to dismiss or demean your experiences.
4 Likes
I didnât mean that in an aggressive fashion sorry, just wanted to acknowledge that Iâm coming from a background without as explicit a history of lynching as that of a poc and less access to firearms than you could have in the US
We do have excessive access to firearms here, and a deeply rooted history of White supremacist terrorism, which is why as a Black woman I find it highly unlikely that Black men are actively choosing to kill themselves in such an agonizing manner.
15 Likes
