Daniel Prude and the Price of Black Lives — Is $12M Enough?
My family needs to heal, and communities need to know that there will be at least some accountability when police kill people like my dad, whose only crime was needing help.” Nathanial McFarland (son of Daniel Prude)
Exactly two months and two days (March 23, 2020) before the murder of George Floyd (May 25, 2020) by police asphyxiation, Daniel Prude, a Black Rochester citizen, died of the same cause during a mental health crisis.
Floyd’s cause of death was a policeman’s knee on his neck; Prude’s death was the result of a policeman’s knee on his back.
Floyd’s death launched protests heard around the world while Daniel Prude’s death has been met with more silence than fanfare. The policeman responsible for Floyd’s death was convicted (https://irmamcclaurin.medium.com/justthink-derek-chauvin-found-guilty-does-it-matter-c2f1c9802644). Nothing has happened to the police responsible for Prude’s death.
The settlement of $12 Million to Prude’s family is a beginning to bring closure to the matter of a wrongful death, but it begs the question of “how much is a Black life worth in America?” (https://www.blackenterprise.com/rochester-family-reaches-historic-settlement-over-death-of-daniel-prude/)
It also should make us ponder why it is that some Black deaths launch movements — global in scope — and others are forgotten?
I mean we still hear constant news about the Uvalde murders (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/us/uvalde-police-suspended.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share) of school children — mostly Latinx — but the shooting deaths in Buffalo (of a majority of Black victims) didn’t generate much media fanfare after a week or so passed (https://www.npr.org/2022/07/18/1112035732/the-buffalo-supermarket-shooter-pleads-not-guilty-to-federal-charges). Why?
There are no statutes or monuments for Daniel Prude in Rochester, NY; there is no street named after him (yet) where he died of asphyxiation (police knee to his chest) during a mental health crisis.
Prude did get a Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Daniel_Prude) like George Floyd (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd). But to the best of my knowledge, there were no celebrity offers of support or scholarships for Prude’s five children.
Daniel Prude may not have garnered national marquee status, but locally, the Black Rochester community felt his loss and mourned him. There were street protests about his death (as well as other Black victims of police violence), including a call for a “Daniel Prude law” captured in Episode I of the “ChangeNow” exhibit (https://rmsc.org/changemakers/changenow/), curated by local Black arts activist Rachel DeGuzman. DuGuzman is also one of the 200 women who was featured in the Rochester Museum and Science Center’s exhibition, “The Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World” (https://rmsc.org/changemakers/). She is also is the Director of 21st Century Arts, Inc., (https://www.21stcenturyartsinc.org/) a Rochester nonprofit dedicated to “activating art and justice.”
Additionally, Rashaad Parker, a local Black artist, honored Prude in his MFA exhibit entitled “A Sanctuary for Daniel Prude.” He included a mural by artist Shawn Dunwoody entitled “Unfinished Business”, which “…depicts photographs of police anti-Blackness from the 1964 uprising [in Rochester, NY] through contemporary BLM protests re George Floyd and Daniel Prude,” says DeGuzman.
DeGuzman also manages The Black House, a venue, located in an historic Black Rochester community that showcases art events like Parker’s exhibition and other programs and activities centering Blackness.
Notwithstanding the local hurt and trauma over Prude’s senseless death, which was not the first, and the absence of any convictions or reprimands for the police involved, I have to raise the question: “is $12 Million enough to replace a person’s life?”
Indeed, after Attorney fees are deducted — somewhere around 30% of the settlement, according to standards or $3,600,000, and the remaining $8,400,000 is split five ways, or $1,680,000 per child, you have to wonder if less than $2M is sufficient to make up for these children’s loss of their father’s hugs, which they will never know, or the advice he might have given in his more lucid moments?
The price of a life in America — scratch that — the price of a BLACK life in America doesn’t seem to be worth too much these days.
So, I am still imploring this country today, what I wrote eight years ago, please “America, “stop killing our Black Sons” (https://bit.ly/BlackPressAward2015).
More to the point, AMERICA STOP KILLING BLACK PEOPLE TODAY AND TOMORROW. ENUFF ALREADY.
©2022 Irma McClaurin
Irma McClaurin (https://bit.ly/DrIrmawebsite / @mcclaurintweets) is the Culture and Education Editor for Insight News, an activist anthropology, an award-winning writer, and Fulbright Specialist. Her book of essay, Justspeak: Reflections on Race, Culture & Politics in America is forthcoming in 2022. McClaurin, a Fulbright Specialist alumni, also was awarded a U.S. Alumni TIES (Thematic International Exchange Seminar) grant for “Black Rochester Narratives: A Community-focused Healing and Preservation Pilot Initiative,” co-directed with Rachel DeGuzman, Executive Director of 21st Century Arts, Inc., a Rochester, NY nonprofit, and funded by the U.S. Department of State.
