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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

2/ The problem is, no one interrogates the expert's confirmation biases or inherent assumptions because "qualifications" don't include the consideration of racism and its motivations.

Until now. After Maryland’s former head medical examiner testified in 2021 that Derek Chauvin was not responsible for George Floyd’s death, concerns arose that his pro-law enforcement bias may have affected his office’s decisions during his seventeen-year tenure. The resulting independent audit released in May 2025 revealed Mr. Black is not alone — almost forty additional in-custody deaths that had been deemed accidental or undetermined should have been categorized as homicides.
sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 10 3

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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

3/ Since we were brought here, we've been deemed to have "superhuman" strength along with other tropes and stereotypes like Black women's de-feminization. What results are people entering into situations with those inherent biases and handling things based on them.

Anton Black was a Black man, a demographic more likely to face police violence. And he had a mental disability — severe bipolar disorder — which, also, made him more likely to experience police violence. But officers at the scene of his death claimed he exhibited “superhuman strength” to justify their use of extreme violence against him.
sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 13 3 • view
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

4/ “Superhuman strength” is an apparent reference to the now debunked “excited delirium.” For too long, excited delirium has been a tool in the back pockets of police, medical examiners, and coroners used to cover up killings in police custody, leaving families without answers..."

sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 10 2 • view
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

5/ "In the 1980s, Wetli attempted to explain the deaths of thirty-two Black women found dead in Miami with excited delirium. It turned out the women had been murdered — many of them showed clear signs of strangulation." Read the whole piece. Black and other POC recognize

sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 12 2 • view
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

6/ these issues because we face them damn near everywhere. From the wonder expressed by white people when we're successful about how we got that way despite our "limitations" to the assumption that we're guilty based on simply assisting. Meanwhile, compare and contrast

sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 10 2 • view
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

7/ the way more white actual criminals are taken into custody ALIVE, infantilized ("he's just a kid!"), receive lesser sentences ("they have their whole life ahead of them!") etc. Even taken to Burger King. And then we put people like the MDME on stands to testify

sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 11 3 • view
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PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social

8/8 about sketchy theories rooted in racial assumptions while protecting the guillty. This gives way too many white people a racism denialism get out of jail free card. "Expert" said it.

sep 1, 2025, 1:35 pm • 9 2 • view