Two more black men have been shot in America. No weapons on them. Nothing. I’m mad.
I should be celebrating sitting on stage with one of the best crooners of my generation (he’s only 13 years older than me, so totally counts) and having him interview ME. I should be fangirling, and talking about how much I now love the color yellow, and how black women shouldn’t be afraid of red lips because I OWNED THAT THING! I should be talking about how my husband is so awesome for facilitating such an awesome surprise, and how GOOGLE and bloggy friends rock!
Instead, I’m once again in the full position of fearing for the lives of my husband, son, father, brothers and cousins. My male friends that happen to be black. Even if they are “articulate” and clean shaven, holding down six figure jobs, their lives aren’t exempt.
There’s a fear online of speaking the truth and then getting a ton of horrid feedback for it. One of the reasons that I am so resistant to having too much of a spotlight on me is because all of the internet bad bottoms come out of hiding to call you mean names, and offer to kill you if you disrupt their feeling of comfort because of your discomfort. The blood of our people is now the runoff in the sewer and no one seems to care. Just a quick cleanup and all will be forgotten.
Listen, I’m seeing too many of the people that I admire and respect saying that there has to be a deeper story regarding these things, but when police officers do shady things like call for back up because he was shot by an fictional black man, privacy must be given to the mourning spouse and his past shouldn’t be brought up. Talk about a double standard. I know that this post is probably a drop in a very deep bucket for so many. Black people in the United States have been calling for equal and FAIR treatment for centuries, and have always been treated as a lower species.
We’re supposed to be grateful because we have a black President. We’re supposed to worry more about the National Anthem then the reason why people refuse to acknowledge it until it acknowledges us. We’re supposed to be grateful while we’re being shot, framed, and then lambasted afterwards. Our families are supposed to go on with their lives and live like good little folks lest they be tormented.
We win lawsuits against the very police forces that cause us misery, and people say we’re money hungry.
We can’t win. We can’t even break even. We’re DYING daily, and people are all, “HAHAHAHAHAHA You should OBEY the law, and raise your hands HIGHER, and YES MASSAH a little louder and then, maybe then, we’ll take a break from our torment to think about you.”
My sixteen year old son is painfully oblivious to what’s going on, and in my selfishness, I want to keep him that way. Homecoming is coming up, and I want him to think more about a soccer and volleyball game and the dance afterwards instead of if this will be the last day that he sees his family. I want him to become irritated with the Student Council that he sits on, changing their mind one more time about a detail, or not sending off information to his fellow students in a timely manner. I want him to laugh with his friends, and bug me about the latest technology. I want to see him grow up. Get married if he chooses to. Have children if he chooses to. Not be murdered.
My husband has written about being black in America before on the blog, and then I shied away from that type of content, because RAINBOWS, UNICORNS, SUNSHINE! Except it rains all too often in this world, and black folk are left without umbrellas.
We need to fix this, and, well, it’s going to have to start with the folks NOT getting shot and killed.