Her Story:
At around 4am on March 21, 2019, L’daijonique Lee, a 24-year-old black woman, was brutally assaulted by a 30-year-old white man, Austin Shuffield. Lee mistakenly drove the wrong way down a one-way street in the Deep Ellum neighborhood in Dallas, Texas, which she had never been to before, and stopped to drop off a friend. This is when the perpetrator, Shuffield, approached her vehicle angry about the way she parked, as her car was allegedly blocking the exit of the parking lot his truck was parked in. Lee’s attorney, Lee Merrit, also later revealed that Lee reported Shuffield was drunkenly yelling racist slurs at her throughout their encounter, during which he also took pictures of her car and license plate.
When Lee got out of her car to address the situation, Shuffield pulled out a handgun to confront her. Scared by the gun, Lee warned Shuffield as he advanced that she was going to call the police if he did not back away. He continued toward her, swatting her phone out of her hand and kicking it down the street, to which she retaliated by trying to hit him away from her. This is when Shuffield attacked Lee, punching her repeatedly in the face and stomach. In what Lee reported was an effort to draw attention to her situation by making noise so that she might get help, she threw a jump box toward the back windshield of Shuffield’s pickup. The police arrived at the scene shortly after receiving a call from a witness to the assault.
Lee was hospitalized after police arrived, sustaining various injuries, including a black eye, swollen jaw, concussion, and cranial swelling. Sheffield was questioned by police at the scene, where he was charged for public intoxication, interfering with an emergency call, and assault, all of which are misdemeanors, which allowed the assaulter to be released from jail on a $2000 bond not even a full 24-hours after being detained. Meanwhile, Lee, the clear victim in this attack, was later charged by law enforcement with a felony for “criminal mischief,” which is usually only a misdemeanor, but because the damage to Shuffield’s truck was estimated above $2500 at $3000, it was marked as a felony. The Dallas District Attorney’s office later dropped this felony charge; however, the fact that these charges were even allowed in the first place has major implications.
Implications and Importance:
Lee’s story is particularly important because it highlights the reality of continued, blatant prejudice against black women in America. This prejudice against black women is a product of interlocking oppressions, a term discussed widely by the Combahee River Collective to articulate the unique oppressions black women face at the intersection of racism and sexism, where they are doubly discriminated against on the basis of their specific, wholistic social location. This phenomena is also dubbed intersectionality in Kimberle Crenshaw's piece "Mapping the Margins."
This intersectional discrimination is seen in Lee’s case, as she, the victim, was initially charged with a felony in a scenario in which she was brutally assaulted. Criminalizing her retaliation to assault, clearly illustrates the bias law enforcement had against her as a black woman, as she was given a harsher charge than her actual assaulter who was white and male. The fact that she was punished also speaks to the issue of people not believing black women, devaluing their credibility, especially in comparison to that of white men. Lee expressed this concern by mentioning in an interview how she was at least thankful that her assault was caught on video because otherwise it would just be her word against his, and even with her visible injuries, she did not believe a "he-said, she-said" case would work in her favor. The fact of the matter is that white women with visible injuries are almost never questioned on their claims, and even worse, white women who even made false claims of violence in the past were never questioned about the validity of their abuse-- remember what happened to Emmitt Till?
Additionally, we can see how Lee's blackness in combination with her womanness resulted in her specific injustice, where she was re-victimized by being charged with a felony for her actions to protect herself during an assault. This examination of the injustice done against Lee is articulated by her attorney in the interview video above and quote below.
"It's not the role of the Dallas Police Department to come in and re-victimize the victim; she has gone through enough. She continues to live in fear, as the person who violently assaulted her and pulled a gun on her is free." -Lee's attorney, Lee Merritt
Another astounding reality of this case is how Shuffield was not charged with a hate crime, even though he shouted racial slurs at Lee while attacking her. Though it is argued by law enforcement that those slurs were not caught on tape and therefore, there is “not enough evidence” to label his attack on Lee in that way, community activists as well as Lee’s attorney, Merritt, have uncovered undeniable, aggressive racism on Shuffield’s social media accounts. One would think that surely this, in combination with his assault of a black woman while vocalizing anti-black sentiments, would be enough to illustrate Shuffield’s racist motive and land him a hate crime. However, as of this report, it still has not.
The legal discrimination does not end here, however. When law enforcement criminalizes a black woman's distressed reaction while sympathizing with her white supremacist assaulter's violence, it is a clear illustration of the patriarchal nature of law, as similar "crimes" that are assumed to occur out of distress, like crimes of passion, are legal under US law. The important thing to note here is that while a woman acting out in distress for her own safety is criminalized, a man acting out in anger, often against a woman, like most crimes of passion are, is not; this shows how the law implicitly institutionalizes the male perspective, and with Lee being a black woman, the institutionalized legal bias against her is double, as a white-bias is also extremely prevalent in law-- apparent in the fact that US law was written and continues to be written by white people. Additionally, this white-orientated perspective is often revealed through its violent consequences for people of color, like Lee's assault. This violence is prevalent much more generally though, as well. For example, consider that black men are killed at the hands of police much more often than their white counterparts, and also, that black women are assaulted and killed at alarming rates by police officers, whereas white women hardly ever suffer this same fate.
Overall, the key takeaway from the implications of Lee's story is that as long as women of color, particularly black women, are criminalized just on the basis of their black womanhood, it is communicated to potential perpetrators that discriminatory violence is okay- is acceptable- is condoned- is ENCOURAGED by the state, and it is this message that endangers the lives of black women everywhere. Further, when black women's lives are quite literally under attack, it is difficult to ever feel safe. Like Patrisse Khan-Cullors said in her #BlackLivesMatter memoir, When They Call You A Terrorist, "I do not remember us together as relaxed, as humans being. We have always had to be humans doing." This feeling of always having to be doing something for safety was obviously echoed by Lee after her assault, as she expressed still fearing for her life after Shuffield was released from jail.
“Not being able to eat not, (not) being able to sleep, it’s always on my mind. I’m scared. I don’t know who’s following me, who’s behind me, who’s watching. He has pictures of my car, maybe my license plate.” -Dai Lee
Insights from Scholars of Black Feminist Thought:
Earlier, it was mentioned how Lee's assault highlights Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality and the Combahee River Collective's interlocking oppressions because of how the circumstances and response to her assault were particular to her identity as a black woman. In addition to these two concepts, the concept of black women as "surrogate men" reveals more nuances in Lee's story.
The concept of black women as "surrogate men" was first mentioned in bell hooks' book, Ain't I a Woman, which analyzed the black female slave experience in America. In the piece, it refers to the masculinization of black women during slavery as they were forced to work in the fields alongside black men, performing tasks that were defined by the white slaveowners as masculine and therefore demeaning for women to do. This is one way white oppressors degraded black women because any masculinized woman was deemed unworthy of the "virtuous" and "pure" title of woman that was often perpetuated through the idealization of white womanhood. This concept puts Lee's assault in greater perspective because in an interview after the attack, Lee described how Shuffield "beat her like a man."
"He charged at me, and he just kept hitting me, and I was like, OK OK OK. Watching that video literally makes me cry. All I could do was try and protect myself. He literally sat there and beat me like a man." -Dai Lee
Certainly, he would not have beat a white woman in that way, revealing that the violent nature of Lee's assault and Shuffield's claims of acting in "self-defense" were a result of this masculine view of black womanhood being perpetuated. In this view, black woman are not seen as vulnerable in the same way that white women are, which only serves to put them at a greater risk for violence.
What Needs to Happen NOW:
When we acknowledge the great risk that black women are at for becoming victims of violence just in living their daily lives, we are left with the question of: so what do we do now? How can we remedy this violence that is a direct result of an interlocking oppression?
First, I would say that a major obstacle that needs to be overcome in the United States is racial and gendered bias in US law. Several social movements and empowerment groups organize around this type of legislative reform constantly, including but not limited to national groups like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, as well as local groups like the Black Women's Defense League and the Next Generation Action Network both in Dallas. These movements and groups fight for justice surrounding black lives everywhere and work to elevate their stories. The BWDL and NGAN were actually both involved in organizing protests to get justice for Dai Lee, urging the DA's office to drop the felony charge against Lee and for Shuffield to be charged with a hate crime. Some specific legislative reforms that groups like these have advocated for include changes in criminal law that acknowledge the greater risk that black women and men face when forced to encounter law enforcement. Law enforcement needs to be held more accountable for their actions, but they should also be trained against using violence in the first place, especially considering that when violence is used there is often a huge racial disparity. This type of training that would work to check implicit bias is absolutely necessary; however, these groups cannot incite change alone.
Like Audre Lorde suggests in "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" we need to define and empower, not divide and conquer because it is the function of our differences in society that empower us. Essentially, change cannot be accomplished in isolation or when more privileged groups refuse to amplify the voices of marginalized groups. It is time to pass the mic. It is time to allow those who have been wrongfully silenced to speak.
SUPPORT WOMEN OF COLOR EMPOWERMENT GROUPS AND #SAYHERNAME!
Article Sources:
https://thegrio.com/2019/04/12/dallas-black-woman-attack-police-chief-charge/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-black-woman-was-beaten-by-a-white-man-with-a-gun-police-charged-her-with-damaging-his-truck/ar-BBVAD70
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/woman-beaten-in-deep-ellum-parking-lot-now-charged-in-the-case/287-b3c4fc48-0a60-417a-a4f6-a3559ad00bec
https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/03/25/deep-ellum-assault-victim-living-fear-attacker/
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/04/03/attorney-deep-ellum-assault-suspect-austin-shuffield-says-public-heard-full-story
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2019/03/21/dallas-bartender-charged-assaulting-woman-accused-blocking-deep-ellum-parking-lot-exit
Academic References:
Combahee River Collective. "A Black Feminist Statement."
Kimberle Crenshaw. "Mapping the Margins."
Patrisse Khan-Cullors. When They Call You a Terrorist.
bell hooks. Ain't I a Woman.
Audre Lorde. "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."