At age sixteen, I went to a high school dance with a white male friend. When we pulled up to the gym, music blaring loudly out the windows, a police officer came over as we got out of the truck, and began shining his flashlight around the cab, questioning what we teenagers were doing there — at a high school dance. I immediately apprised the officer of the fact that he had no right to conduct a search of my friend’s vehicle without probable cause. Our music had not been loud enough for a noise violation, and we had turned it off, as soon as my friend parked the car.

The officer continued to saunter around the vehicle shining his flashlight, asking us questions, throwing his weight around to let us know he was the one with power. But I had questioned him instinctively. I didn’t think about it, about the consequences, about the ways in which my questions might be perceived as resistance or threat. I saw a police officer improperly enforcing the law, and I was just arrogant and naïve enough to think that the principles we had learned in Civics and American History actually mattered. He was on a power trip, and people on power trips irritate me.

“You seem irritated,” a police officer said to Sandra Bland when he pulled her over two Fridays ago for failure to signal. “I am. I really am,” she told him.

Apparently she had been attempting to explain that she pulled over to get out of the officer’s way, and she didn’t understand why he had stopped her. He demanded that she put out her cigarette, which she is legally allowed to smoke in her own car. When she didn’t, he demanded she get out of the car. She refused, telling him clearly that she didn’t have to get out of the car if she wasn’t under arrest. So then, after opening her door, reaching into her car and grabbing her, he yelled that she was under arrest. He didn’t say what the charges were.

Off camera, Sandra narrates for the video, which she knows is recording exactly what is being done to her, that her wrist is being grabbed and twisted, her head being slammed into the ground. When she informs the officer that she has epilepsy, he replies: “Good. Good.” And because she refused to go willingly into an unjust arrest for charges that remained unnamed, she was then arrested for resisting arrest.

On three occasions I have given “attitude” to police, asked questions about unfair harassment and citations, and let the officers know that I didn’t agree with how they were doing their jobs. I have never threatened an officer or refused an order. But I have vigorously exercised my right to ask questions and to challenge improper shows of force.

I have had the police threaten to billyclub me, write unfair tickets, and otherwise make public spaces less safe, rather than more safe, for me to inhabit, all out of a clear lust for power. On the wrong day, I could have been Sandra Bland. And if a police officer pulled me over for a bullshit-ass reason, I absolutely would have given him the business on the side of the highway. By this, I don’t mean I would have made threats. I mean I would have asked questions.

All Sandra Bland did was ask questions. Now she is dead. Supposedly after hanging herself in a jail cell. Just a few hours before her sister was coming to bail her out. None of that makes sense. What does make sense are the words of her mother, Geneva Reed-Veal. She said,

“Once I put this baby in the ground, I’m ready. This means war.”

The American public is comfortable with Black mothers who are charitable in their grief, Black mothers who declare that this isn’t “a race issue, but a right and wrong issue,” mothers who forgive, mothers who become silent, stoic, and elegant. But it is time that Black mothers who keep burying children because of poor policing begin to fight back.

Nothing about this officer’s actions were legal. It is the evidence of Sandra Bland’s irritation that caused this officer to escalate. He firmly expected to be able to harass a citizen going about her business and have her be okay with it. He expected that she wouldn’t question him. He wanted her submission. Her deference. Her fear.

White power. Black submission. It’s the oldest trick in the white supremacist handbook. The officer might think he wanted Sandra Bland’s respect. But what he really wanted was her fear. And the fact is: He is entitled to neither. She did not owe him either her respect or her fear. When his white maleness and his badge didn’t elicit the first, he used the power of that badge to compel the second.