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Lesson Overview
Featured Article: “What We Know About Breonna Taylor’s Case and Death” by Richard A. Oppel Jr., Derrick Bryson Taylor and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
The death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black medical worker who was shot and killed by Louisville, Ky., police officers in March during a botched raid on her apartment, led to wide-scale demonstrations across the country earlier this year. Her death has become a symbol of the cruelty and racism that Black women face, and her name and image have spread far and wide — from social media to the jerseys of the W.N.B.A.
On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted one former police officer on a charge of wanton endangerment for his actions during the raid, but no one was charged with causing Ms. Taylor’s death.
In this lesson, you will learn more about the details of Ms. Taylor’s life and death, the recent grand jury decision and the ensuing protests. Then you will choose to respond creatively to what you read or use your media literacy skills to analyze the “memeification” of Ms. Taylor’s story.
Note to teachers and students:
The content and themes explored in this lesson are complex and troubling, and may bring up a variety of emotions for students. Before addressing a traumatic event like this one, you might read our advice on talking about sensitive issues in the news. Or borrow some of the strategies for preparing students for difficult discussions from this lesson, which was created in response to the events in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, from Facing History and Ourselves.
And to help ground students before reading, as well as honor the many reactions that may come up throughout the lesson, you might begin with this one-minute meditation from The Times’s “How to Meditate” guide.
One Minute Meditation
A one-minute practice led by Tara Brach.Warm Up
What do you know or what have you heard about the police killing of Breonna Taylor and the grand jury decision and demonstrations that followed? What thoughts or emotions do these events bring up for you? Take a moment to write down what comes to mind and, if you’re in a classroom context and you feel comfortable doing so, share it with your classmates.
Next, scroll through the photographs in the article “‘There Are Breonnas Everywhere’: Protests for Breonna Taylor in Pictures.” Choose one photograph that you find particularly moving or interesting and respond to the following questions:
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What is going on in this picture?
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What do you see that makes you say that?
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What more can you find?
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What feelings come up as you look at the photo?
Questions for Writing and Discussion
Read the article, then answer the following questions:
1. Reflect on how your identity, family or experiences might shape your reaction to this news event. What are some of the most important aspects of your identity? What personal connections might you have to this story? How might these inform the way you respond to the questions below?
2. Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, who fired his gun — and was shot — during the raid of Ms. Taylor’s apartment, wrote in an email to fellow officers, “I know we did the legal, moral and ethical thing that night.” After reading about what happened in Louisville, what is your reaction to that statement? Do you agree? Why or why not?
3. What repercussions did the officers who were involved in the raid that led to Ms. Taylor’s death face? What has been the public reaction to these sanctions and why? Do you believe they were deserved? Did they go too far? Or not far enough?
4. What are some of the changes that the city of Louisville has made since Ms. Taylor was killed? What are Ms. Taylor’s family and activists asking for in terms of justice?
5. Why has the police account been so hotly disputed?
6. What is the “Say Her Name” movement about? What does it mean to you?
7. The article gives several examples of celebrity and activist reactions to the case. Which of these stand out to you? Have you seen anyone else post about Ms. Taylor on your social media timelines? Which posts have been most compelling to you and why?
Going Further
Option 1: React and Respond
How do you feel after reading the featured article and responding to the questions? Express your thoughts and emotions in any way that makes sense to you. You might write about your reactions and questions via a diary entry, a discussion with your peers, or some sort of art project.
In your reflection, you might consider some of the following questions:
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What is your reaction to the life and death of Ms. Taylor?
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How do you feel about the activism that has followed her death? Have you witnessed or participated in any of it, be it a social media campaign, a protest or something else? What has it meant to you?
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What are your thoughts on the grand jury decision? Do you think it is fair? Do you think it is an example of justice? Why or why not? If you do not think the decision is adequate, what more do you think needs to be done?
In this episode of “The Daily,” “The Killing of Breonna Taylor, Part 2,” the Times journalist Rukmini Callimachi reads part of Ms. Taylor’s scrapbook from when she was graduating from high school in 2011 to share more about who she was:
Graduating this year on time is so important to me, because I’ll be the first of my family to accomplish this. My mother wasn’t able to finish high school on time and get her diploma. So I know how much my getting mine means to her.
To have my entire family expecting me to graduate and set a good example for the younger ones is one of the biggest responsibilities I’ve ever had. But I refuse to let anyone down, regardless of the amount of pressure I have on my shoulders.
I want to be the one who finally breaks the cycle of my family’s educational history. I want to be the one to finally make a difference. I want to be the one that everybody can look up to with smiles on their faces, telling me how proud of me they are, the one they can finally say, ‘You did it,’ to. I want that to be me, Breonna Shaquelle Taylor.
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How do you feel after reading those paragraphs from Ms. Taylor’s scrapbook? What connections, if any, can you make to what she wrote?
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What more do you wish you could know about her?
Option 2: Media Literacy
Before reading this article, had you heard about Ms. Taylor? If yes, where did you first see her name? Do you regularly see her name, or image, referred to and circulated on social media?
Some writers, activists and celebrities have pushed back on what they call the “memeification” of Ms. Taylor’s death. In a July 2 article for the The Huffington Post, Zeba Blay writes:
Among some of the most common Breonna Taylor memes are these: A picture of the cartoon character Arthur from “Hey, Arthur!” captioned with “And I say hey! What a wonderful kind of day …to arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor!” Numerous sexy selfies (like a since deleted-post from model Duckie Thot) with the caption “Now that I’ve got your attention, arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.” A tweet from Black journalist Zellie Imani that reads, “Drink water. Use seasoning. And arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor.”
She continues:
There are, obviously, no easy or clear-cut answers on how to navigate the current moment, how to sustain momentum in these ongoing conversations about race without succumbing to a momentary phase of a trend. But, if anything, these memes should give us real pause, should make us consider the ways in which Black women, in particular, are so often used as fodder for jokes and humor (often at their expense) on the internet. The nature of memes, after all, is that they are transient. They come and then they go.
Turning Breonna Taylor into a meme, then, risks turning the conversation around what justice looks like for her into a temporary fad. Other than the firing of one police officer involved in her killing, there have been no real moves toward rectifying the situation. And so, as “Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” gets repeated over and over again, it becomes an abstraction, it begins to lose meaning.
What is your reaction to Ms. Blay’s contention that “memifying” Ms. Taylor’s death has made it begin to “lose meaning”? Does this argument resonate with your online experience at all?
To what extent do you think social media can be a helpful way to spread a message? In what ways can it be potentially harmful?
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September 25, 2020 at 03:00PM
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Lesson of the Day: ‘What We Know About Breonna Taylor’s Case and Death’ - The New York Times
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