I want to know more about the Wal Mart Hostage Taker
Corlunda McGinister was shot and killed on 12/21 after taking a Walmart employee hostage in Richland , Mississippi. Videos that have surfaced show Mc Ginsister , who is black, looking very animated, distressed even and asking for reporters to come down to the store. Other clips show when the shots are heard killing the 21 year old. And I have questions.
The whole thing looks like a scene out of many movies I have watched. Someone seizing the moment and control of someone as a hostage taker and demanding to see or speak to the public. As the viewers, we may or may not know that the hostage taker in this case has very valid reasons for demanding to be heard. Often times, law enforcement in these movies are guilty and/or shady as hell. It’s something else entirely to see this play out in real time and in this case the hostage taker did not get her chance to speak her peace.
Police officers are trained to kill. Police officers are inclined to kill. When a suspect is Black, those police officers are primed to kill. In fact , I believe they often look for a reason to kill. Paperwork be damned, protect and serve means for many of us to lock up, beat up and kill Black people.
Of course, I am not forgetting this “ crazed” Black woman has a gun in her hand potentially threatening the safety of an innocent worker. Of course, I am not forgetting this “ crazed” Black woman is threatening the safety of others and disturbing the peace. Of course I could put myself in the shoes that commentators will most likely admonish me to do so therefore justifying the actions of the officers. But I can’t help but wondering as a Black woman in this country , if killing Ms. McGinister was the only way to end this ordeal. I don’t know how long this episode took place but I am curious if attempts were made to have a mental health professional come to the scene. I’m curious if attempts were made to talk to Ms. McGinister about what was disturbing her spirit so much that she gave up her very young life to hold up a Wal Mart employee. This girl was only 21 years old. Yes ,Twenty one years old and still a girl. The way she would be described if she were white. In this case, this 21 year old Black girl clearly had a whole bunch of mental stressors and perhaps very real physical threats on and in her life for her to do something like this . For this twenty one year old Black girl who could have had a disenfranchised background, who probably wasn’t in the best economic states, who may not have had a secure social network, something and somewhere and so many somebodies failed this young lady. Twenty one year old Black girls do not hold random Walmart employees at gunpoint , in an animated state , requesting to speak to the media. Something else was at hand and we may now never know.
I want to hope that every effort was made to try to find the appropriately trained crisis professionals. I want to hope every effort was made if the decision was to shoot to not shoot in places that could be lethal. I want to hope that attempts were made to calm Ms.Mc Ginister down. Maybe she truly, truly needed some help . But to be Black and woman , to be Black and girl is to always be burdened with considered expendable, voiceless, undeserving of presence , maligned and roughly handled. It’s to be expected to lose that feminine essence of softness and vulnerability and to never be able to hold your trespassers accountable. It’s to run into lemon after lemon after lemon but never have tools to even begin the process of squeezing into some semblance of lemonade. Just running around with these boulders that can never be crushed, with baggage that never gets unpacked. I promise if we dig deeper we will see a young lady who was failed by so many systems. I promise we will see in Ms. Mc Ginister’s life ,indictments about the state of our society and how we relate to Black girls and women.
Blackthelma 2022
