How Breonna Taylor Became A Meme

What if a big shark just ate all of the police? This proposition, which was posited anonymously in the form of a flyer stapled to a telephone pole, made its rounds across social media. Joking about serious subjects isn’t inherently wrong; humor can be a cathartic response to tragedy. But when such jokes start to dominate the public consciousness more so than resources, direction, and mobilization, we’ve got a problem.

This phenomenon of the “meme-ification” of difficult crises is clear in the unfortunate case of Breonna Taylor. On March 13, 2020, Taylor, a 26-year-old Louisville resident, was murdered in her own home after police entered her home due to a no-knock search warrant. If you search “arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor” on Twitter, you’ll find plenty of posts demanding justice given that though it’s been over 100 days since her murder, the cops who shot her have not been arrested. The phrase has become a battle cry and a demand for justice.

Unfortunately, the phrase is also being used in memes and as the punchline of jokes — a rallying cry for justice diluted for likes, shock value, and clicks. It seems there are two reasons this is happening. On the one hand, people may be burnt out from protests against police brutality, and may be using this content as a way to revert back to a normal discourse. However, compelled by guilt or misguided integrity, these folks don’t want to appear as if they’ve completely forgotten about the state of the world, and sprinkle Breonna Taylor’s name into a caption, or even use the phrase “arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor,” as a TikTok audio. On the other hand, people are using her name as a literal punchline. For example, this post uses it subversively, in addition to the posts and threads of people joking, dancing, or trying on outfits where Taylor’s name is the last thing you’d expect to read, and is therefore meant to be humorous.

If we were to give people invoking this phrase as a “joke” the benefit of the doubt and assume they’re doing so to spread awareness, it’s still problematic in that it doesn’t do much of anything. Posting “arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor” under a picture or in a meme, without providing any links or resources for consumers of that content, just takes up space. There are millions of tweets that use the phrase, and on TikTok there are 3.4 million videos that use the “arrest the killers of Breonna Taylor” sound or hashtag. Some users do include links to petitions or resources that can and will help deliver justice, but given the sheer number of posts including her name without resources that are out there, those chances at engaging people in a meaningful way are diluted.

Taylor’s case is just one in a long line of black people murdered by the police. It’s an epidemic that dates back centuries, and, like most forms of generational burden, it manifests in trauma. It’s important to examine how all of us deal with this trauma and how we delineate which trauma is even ours to deal with. For example, the ambiguous threat of danger is universal, the threat of danger or harm from law enforcement is a much more unique fear, and the threat of getting unjustly gunned down by police is a pain that is inherited by Black people the moment they enter the world. There are many ways to cope with trauma, but co-opting the very real, tangible pain of other people to make sense of it for yourself, through jokes, probably isn’t the best way.

People are only willing to entertain or learn about a subject for so long. Yes, each meme, each joke may only take up a sliver of space in and of itself, but together they water down the pool of content about a serious topic with frivolity. Doesn’t Breonna Taylor deserve an entirely cohesive and coordinated effort in her honor instead of one that’s peppered with half-hearted attempts to utilize her name? Maybe wrapping your brand activism in a joke is the best way to get the largest number of people to listen on social media, but if you have to modify your activism in order to get people’s attention, those people aren’t ready for a seat at the table yet. If you’re going to turn your attention to police brutality, it should not be done dispassionately. It’s distressing that people would need to be duped into preserving their concern for BLM or Breonna Taylor; people shouldn’t need to be tricked into caring.

There are a plethora of resources at our fingertips to get involved. There is no amplification that is too loud for Breonna Taylor’s cause, but if our voices aren’t cohesive, the movement becomes too diluted to continue to march at its deserved pace. We can’t sugar coat our activism so as to not leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. Combating racism is inherently exhausting, but we have to get used to that discomfort and sacrifice if we’re going to get anywhere. The longer we pacify and contort our outreach because of our own sensitivities, the further we stray from justice. The question people need to ask themselves is: Do I care, or do I want to look like I do?