Kansas City Star: Illustration of a person’s hand being tied up by the American flag. Courtesy of Kansas City Star. 2013
As I sit here and listen to my “Relaxation” station on pandora to cure my vexation, Piano Guys “thousands years” doesn’t fade out “J Cole’s “Be free”. It’s almost as if my mind has created some sort of a mash up between the two. “I could die a thousand times waiting…to be free”. There is nothing truer than that statement. I would even go as far as putting it in a history book next to all of the facts that we have been taught; From the first step off of the slave ship down to taking that lash from a whip when someone of my melanoid family spelled ‘Pensylvania’ the best they knew how when making the Liberty Bell. Accident? Not at all
likely! We have been making statements from the very beginning.
…but those statements come with a price? We are paying in blood as we always have. No matter how many degrees we hold, how many positions we may qualify for the darkness of our skill will always instill fear in “Americans”.
I am Mike Brown; almost daily I’m shot and left to see because I chose to walk in the street today. There is not an outing that goes by that my fiancé isn’t pushing me onto the sidewalk or placing himself closer to traffic. He calls me country for doing so but now I see it as an “it could have been me” situation.
I am Tamir Rice because I have an imagination. As a child I would play cops and robbers. I went as far as pointing a gun at imaginary bad guys in the distance. At the time I never knew that I was bad too because my skin displayed a darker hue.
I am Eric Garner because I sought help from the police to keep from being harassed.
My generation has been told time after time “you don’t know what we did to give you what you have today” but what do we really have?
We have the majority-they fear us and shoot from afar because they’re too afraid to come near us. We have modern day Emmett Till’s and George Stinny’s. We have men and women going to war for a country that doesn’t even allow us to use the front door. We have to work twice has hard to just be passed over and ignored more and more. That just about evens the score to what the prior generations thought they were fighting for.
So what can you do to make a difference? Be one less negro that’s bound by old chains. Keep all of the parts of you that God gave you. There’s no declaration that can give me more independence than what God has given me. I will continue to speak freely about those situations that may make the majority feel uncomfortable.
They (insert your group of choice/institution/organization) wish they could take my voice back!
TheblacQSoap 