IT Blog

There were no words to describe how much I hurt the night I read of Elijah McClain for the first time. I unwillingly came across the story of this 23-year-old autistic Black man on my Instagram timeline. He died last year following a chokehold and a ketamine injection administered by police. Once I was made aware of what happened to him, I saw his story everywhere, including in the fears that I held for my family.

By then, I’d grown accustomed to the ritual of opening my apps to the news of the latest instance of race-related suffering and reflecting in silent despair for the rest of the day. As I scrolled through my feeds, each post—especially images and videos that show Black people dead and dying—seemed to contribute to a continuous stream of death. And the compounding knowledge was breaking me down.

There is nowhere to hide from trauma when you’re a Black person in 2020, and the more time online, the higher the risks.

“People…