This saddening news comes a week after Florida A&M University student and star women’s basketball player Shannon Washington was stabbed and killed by her friend. This has got to stop.
We as a community have to do better. Their killers didn’t just take the life of a person away from their families and friends. They took the lives of valuable contributors to the Black community and to the world. Who knows what Dominique Frazier and Shannon Washington could have accomplished? Now we’ll never be fortunate enough to know.
What kind of argument between friends and roommates could have led to murder? There is something broken in our community that needs to be addressed and fixed.
We are so worried about being hard and being tough that we minimize our humanity. We feel the need to protect ourselves by portraying a hard, emotionless shell to protect the frail and fragile ego. So in the middle of any petty argument, it escalates into something bigger due to our need to validate our toughness, and keeps escalates until someone gets hurt—or worse.
Hundreds of black youth are dying in the same manner as these two young women are. Senseless violence caused by lost black men and women hiding behind guns and knives. Never forget Dominique Frazier or Shannon Washington. It is a reminder that there is still a lot of work to do in our community. It is a reminder that everyone in higher education does not possess a higher intellect.
This weekend was supposed to be a time of celebration and reunion for Bowie State University. Instead, it became a time for mourning for one of our own. The HBCU community is a family. Bowie State’s loss and FAMU’s loss is a loss for all of us.
