Should I begin this by listing the names of young black men who were killed by police officers, authority figures, or self proclaimed vigilantes?
That list is too damn long. If you go on Wikipedia and look up the recorded lynchings of black men since the civil war, the one's listed are only a small percentage of those that actually occurred.
In the past few weeks we have seen Michael Brown murdered and another young black man named John Crawford III. Who is Michael Brown? A young man who may have spent this week packing up and getting ready for his first semester of college.
In reaction to his death his mother spoke through tears about how it was difficult to raise Michael in the straight and narrow while keeping him from falling into the community around him. Michael graduated high school and had dreams of being an engineer not an athlete, rapper, or drug dealer.
He was murdered as he walked home from the store which follows the narrative that goes with one of these murders. "I'm going to the store and coming right back" sounds simple enough for anyone who's not a black man.
Crawford was killed in an Ohio Walmart for opening a toy gun he had bought and told the officers that approached him that it was not real and they proceeded to shoot him anyway.
There is an inherent fear of the black male in American society. The late comedian Patrice O'Neal talked about it in one bit called the "Pepsi Can Rapist". In it he talks about how when in an elevator with a white woman, the woman clutches her purse and is scared yet coincidentally he is thinking "God, please let this white woman get home safely so I'm not the prime suspect in whatever happens to her".
There has been many a time I've walked around the city, malls, different places and I feel the need to slow down how I walk in fear that I am making the person walking in front of me afraid. You read that right, I am in fear of their fear of me. Some may say if you're not guilty of anything you shouldn't be paranoid but when the Michael Browns and Trayvon Martins of the world are being killed without cause and there are laws like New York City's "Stop & Frisk" where an officer can stop and search you like a criminal without justification, you can't help but feel a little paranoid.
Michael and Trayvon's death follows a long history of black youths being made examples of. Emmett Till was just 15 when he was murdered by a group of white men for making a pass at one's wife in 1955. He was taken from his uncle's house in the middle of the night and the men were all acquitted even with overwhelming evidence.
The methods have changed but the outcomes have not. They can't grab you out of your homes as they did in the Jim Crow south but they still face no real consequence for exterminating us. That's when you have to ask what is the value of a black man's life in today's society?
Eric Garner was a 43 year old husband, father, and grandfather who made a living selling cigarettes wholesale, a non-violent crime that cost him his life by police officers in Staten Island, NY. There is footage of his murder and the events leading to the police officer putting a choke hold that is not part of NYPD procedure.
This case like many others involving officers will likely see these officers not face much penalties.
People like George Zimmerman and the murdering officers view black men as menaces, savages, or stray dogs. They fail to realize that we are people with lives and families that care for us and us for them. Oscar Grant had a daughter, Eric Garner had grandchildren, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were sons that had parents. Grant's daughter has no father. Garner's grandkids have no grandpa. Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin no longer have their son and neither does Lesley McSpadden.
People ask why is there only an uproar when a young black is killed by a non-black but none when blacks kill other blacks?
Stray dogs. When two stray dogs maul each other on the street there is no issue but once a human gets involved then it is a crime. America cares not for the kids in Chicago killing each other because you never see the gun rights activists step up to the pulpit fighting for the civilians in Chicago who aren't part of the violence to have guns to protect themselves from the world of crime and gang violence around them.
When I expressed my disappointment in the George Zimmerman ruling I said "How am I going to explain to my future son that his life means nothing in America", a white woman responded to me by saying "But we have a black president?" as if Barack Obama's election ended all the racism in America.
That statement in of itself shows that the ignorance will continue.
Martin Luther King Jr. and others started the work but we still have to eradicate the ignorance and intolerance of these oppressors.
The people of Ferguson took to the streets and rioted in retaliation for Brown's death. But if our history shows us anything it is that non-violence and turning the other cheek gains much more results. By letting the oppressor show what they conceive as their might and by displaying our resistance we make them look much worst to an outside eye.
Until there is a day young black men like myself can walk out the door without the fear feeling it may be the last we see our loved ones and them seeing us, America will not be at peace and racism will not be dead and buried as it should.
