Site icon Just Add Color

McKinney, TX: The Latest on the Situation and A Call-Out to White Feminists

Here’s what’s been going down since the world learned about that awful McKinney pool party incident.

• The officer involved in this, Eric Casebolt, is not only a police officer who trains other officers (which is frightening), has been accused of racial profiling before, as The Grio reports. The victim, Albert Earl Brown Jr., sued Casebolt after an incident in 2007, in which Casebolt called Brown a “dope dealer” after viewing him sitting in the car with a white woman. He also told the woman he was making a mistake for being with Brown. Brown also stated that Casebolt made up a story about seeing marijuana seeds in the car and made Brown get out of the car, drop his pants, and proceeded to grope him in public. The case was eventually dropped because, as Brown states, evidence was hard to track while he was in prison on drug charges.

• Hundreds of people protested the pool incident, which offered up these cool images, as posted by MTV (most of the pictures from activist Deray McKesson):

Bustle posted more Twitter coverage:

• There have been several feminist and women-centric outlets that have posted articles about the McKinney incident, including The Feminist Wire, Elle.com, and, as already stated above, Bustle.  But, I have to say, I’m having some troubles with the inherent lack of discussion feminists are having about Casebolt throwing Dejarria, a 14-year-old girl, to the ground and pinning her there with his knee.

Naturally, there’s tons of aversion towards white feminists and their lack of talk about this issue, since the common thought is that white feminism, as a whole, doesn’t view non-white women as women. Instead, it seems like white feminism, as a whole, views non-white women as demographics or problems to be fixed or Anglicized. As Twitter denizens state:

I could fill this post up with reasons why “white feminism” is seen as having insidious elements in it, but you can read about that in this post. 

Thankfully, Twitter created the hashtag #HandsOffDejarria, which gives love for this poor girl and hopes to educate others who, for whatever reason, don’t see what happened to her as a problem.

Thankfully, Casebolt has resigned after unrest and urgings from community leaders, protesters, the community itself, and groups like the NAACP. Charges have also been dropped against Adrian Martin, the only person actually arrested from the pool party. However, I’m sure the story is far from over.

What do you think about this news? Give your opinions in the comments section below! Also, if you’ve got more to say, keep the conversation going on Facebook andTwitter.

Still from video taken by Brandon Brooks

Exit mobile version