In January of this year, Jaahnavi Kandula was struck and killed by a Seattle Police Department SUV. Few things have been more chilling to listen to than the bodycam video of the officer responding to the accident. The officer, on the phone with the local police union president, confirms Kandula is dead, laughing as if he had made a clever joke. Later in the video, he suggests that the city pay Kandula’s family $11,000 as compensation for her death, laughing again and telling the other officer “she had limited value.”

Since this incident resurfaced in early September, it has been on my mind almost constantly. There is not anything especially surprising about the violence and callousness of the officers involved. Even their sadism has precedent. The value judgment is most striking. The officer in the video verbalizes what has been implied in the decades of incidents of police violence against civilians –– that their victims are beneath them, undeserving of dignity, valueless. “She had limited value” is the quiet part said out loud, an admission of contempt that leaves no room for interpretation. This, this complete denial of humanity, is what I have held onto for several weeks.

In a simpler column, I would stop at condemning the actions of the officer. I would call for a change to the way policing works in the United States. I’d say that we’d have to work to conceive of a new way to approach public safety. But doing that lets me, and you, off of the hook. The officer’s words are damning for us as well as him because we understand exactly what he meant. “She had limited value” is a statement made in the shared language of our nation. It draws upon our collective understanding of who matters and who doesn’t in this country, and it reinforces conceptions of value that strip ourselves and each other of our common humanity. 

What it means to have value in this country is, and has always been, tied to our systems of labor and capital. America’s exploitative capitalism demands extreme competition from us. At the mercy of the market, we learn to prize the fulfillment of our interests and place those of others at the periphery. We come to view our significance as something tied to our productive capacity, and we seek to signal our value with things like degrees and job titles. 

These views are scaffolded by white supremacy and patriarchy. We default to assuming the intelligence and productivity of white people, and treat the qualifications of people of color, particularly Black and brown people, with skepticism. Proximity to whiteness thus becomes a marker of value. We view cisgender men as more rational and capable of leadership than women and gender minorities. And we view those who don’t fit neatly into gender norms as deviant, their non-conformity as a challenge to our established value systems. 

These values, diffused through our cultural environment and reinforced through our daily social interactions, produced the officer’s statement. And they made it clear to us what the officer meant. He was implying that Jaahnavi Kandula’s gender, race and status as an academic meant that she wasn’t important enough to receive recognition and care.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it should be said that we reproduce this kind of value stratification at Yale. It does not always take the form of racism, gender discrimination and exploitative labor arrangements, but our practice of slotting one another into categories of significance is no less apparent. 

Among other brilliant students, we find ways to further distinguish ourselves from one another. We do so by adhering to the system of value established by Yalies before us. It is marked by leadership in extracurricular groups and membership in societies, assessed by questions like “What did you do this summer” and “What’s your post grad plan?” 

These are the — maybe not so — subtle ways in which we class each other on this campus. This, the litigation of our own and of others’ relative standing on campus, sidelines the aspects of our lives essential to how we show up in the world. And so when we engage with each other in this way, we deny each other the recognition of our humanity separate from what we can produce for others. 

The ends of such a practice are not always fatal as in Kandula’s case. It is unlikely that anyone at Yale will die because their fellow Yalies don’t see them as important. But it can be incredibly damaging when Yalies step out into the world and begin leading institutions with this kind of mindset. When we normalize recognizing and respecting someone insofar as they adhere to our perverse value system, we justify denying those things to people who fail to live up to our standards. Yalies who find themselves in leadership positions later in life may bring this thinking to bear on the systems that people rely on to survive, making our world even less humane.

Describing what Kandula was like, her family said that “her radiant smile and bubbly personality warmed the hearts of everyone she met, and she had a natural ability to connect with people from all walks of life.” Her life was “beyond any dollar value for her mother and family.” 

I wonder what our university would be like if we valued people in this way, if we cared for people simply because we recognized their humanity. I wonder how we would show up in the world if dignity and respect were not something to be won. I imagine this institution would not suffer from the problems of inhumanity and disregard it has dealt with for so long. And I imagine we as Yalies might become more of a force for good in our communities. And maybe then, lives like Kandula’s would finally be recognized for the limitless value they have. 

CALEB DUNSON: is a former Opinion Editor and current columnist for the News. Originally from Chicago, Caleb is a senior in Saybrook College majoring in Political Science and Economics. His column “What We Owe,” runs monthly and “explores themes of collective responsibility at Yale and beyond.” Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu

CALEB DUNSON
Caleb Dunson is a former co-opinion editor and current columnist for the News. Originally from Chicago, Caleb is a senior in Saybrook College majoring in Political Science and Economics. His column "What We Owe," runs monthly and "explores themes of collective responsibility at Yale and beyond." Contact him at caleb.dunson@yale.edu