Marist Black Community Exhausted in Light of Tyre Nichols' Murder

Americans across the nation protest the brutal assault of Tyre Nichols by the Memphis PD. Source: Becker1999 via Flickr.

One week into 2023, police brutality once again made headlines. 

On the night of Jan. 7 on an initial reckless driving charge, Tyre Deandre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man was pulled over and assaulted by five officers of the Memphis Police Department. The three-minute-long attack, consisting of multiple strikes to Nichols’ body and a series of verbal threats, resulted in his hospitalization at St. Francis Hospital. He remained there in critical condition, before dying three days later. Graphic footage released from the night has since circulated the media, sparking mass uproar from Americans. Many black students at Marist are aware of the incident and describe a range of initial emotions, but one remained particularly apparent: overwhelming fatigue. 

“My initial reaction to hearing of this was just exhaustion, honestly,” Kumba Nyang ‘23 said. “We’re here again. And as many people are protesting, things are happening, the moment things die down something happens again. How does this keep occurring over and over again?” 

In 2020, the publicized murder of George Floyd by law enforcement sparked a nationwide Black Lives Matter-led movement, causing a rapid increase in the number of social justice protests around the United States. Footage of protests, racially-motivated behaviors and acts of police brutality began to flood media platforms. Given the amount of coverage devoted to this content and the frequency at which acts of violence have headlined the media, public voices have posed the concern that the black community is becoming desensitized to trauma, questioning what the long-term effects of this may be. 

“I definitely think we are getting desensitized,” Ti-Yahn Williams ‘25 said. “But I also think that it’s to the point where we don’t want to explain ourselves anymore. You have to see it from a black lens. Seeing acts of police brutality and the murdering of black people, it’s just so triggering and so upsetting. We don’t want to feel angry anymore or be upset over it, it’s not a surprise anymore, even though it’s equally as heartbreaking. I feel like you have no choice but to desensitize yourself, for protection.” 

In agreement with this need for self-protection, some students at Marist have made the active choice to limit their media consumption of graphic videos online to safeguard their mental health. One method of doing this has been to adjust social platforms to filter certain content from being displayed. 

“I, at this moment in time, do not watch any videos relating to violence being perpetuated on black bodies. I just refuse to do so,” Kumba Nyang ‘23 said. “I do believe that the stories should be shared and I will share them, but I just refuse to actually watch graphic videos like that. I think that as black people, we need to protect our mental health because we experience these things first hand. Personally, I don’t need to watch a video to understand it, or know about it.” 

Nichols’ death came days after the death of Keenan Anderson, a 31-year-old black man who was publicly tased and beaten by the LAPD on Jan. 3. Both incidents have since sparked a series of protests and unrest across the country. Today, all five police officers involved in Nichols’ attack have been fired and currently face charges of second-degree murder. In his State of the Union Address on Feb. 7, President Joe Biden acknowledged the incident while standing alongside Nichols’ mother. He called on a need for more police accountability and revised law enforcement training. 

“The more police brutality that keeps occurring, the more scared the public, especially people of color, are going to be of the police,” Roshan Kalikasingh ‘24 said. “The police are supposed to be serving the citizens, but in society today it feels like we live in an adversarial community where it is citizens v.s. police. It's videos like Nichols that made me want to major in criminal justice. As a person of color, I want to implement change and want my grandkids to grow up in a society where they would not be scared of police officers.”