Fat Hatred and Racism: Part of the Eric Garner Story

CW for discussions of obesity, racism, and death.

I’m just starting to hear about this, and it makes me so enraged that I felt compelled to post right away.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/eric-garner-death-inevitable-says-lawyer.html

Five years ago Eric Garner was placed in a chokehold by an NYPD officer during an arrest. The crime Garner was accused of was selling loose cigarettes. When the NYPD officer attempted to take Garner down, he cut off his air supply. Even though Garner repeatedly told the officer that he couldn’t breathe, he was choked until he passed out and died. The NYPD is finally hearing testimony on this crime and trying to determine if the officer involved, who has been on desk duty for the last five years, will be fired.

And THIS BULLSHIT is what the officer’s lawyer is using as his defense. He would have died anyway. He was so fat that any moment could have been his last. Just hugging him could have led to his death! Who knows!

The sheer audacity of this lawyer to assume he knows a damn thing about the health and well-being of Eric Garner before he was subjected to routine, racist police brutality. It’s fine that he was brutalized and attacked. “He was just a fat black man. His life span was limited anyway.”

The fact is we will never know how much longer Eric Garner might have lived with his asthma and high blood pressure and obesity because he was killed by a police officer. Even the medical examiner who autopsied Garner concluded that the officer’s actions directly led to Garner’s death. That it was the reaction to the loss of oxygen that triggered a cascading failure.

Eric Garner was just 3 years older than I am today and we have the same issues: asthma, high blood pressure, obesity. I guess it’d be okay if I was killed, too, because hey, I was going to die anyway.