The Biggest Generational Curse

I am a black millennial born shortly after the Rodney King riots in LA. My brother and cousins were all old enough to have witnessed it all at a traumatizingly young age. I remember from the time I could talk, my mom would stress to us how important it is for us to be able to articulate our words. My mom never lied to me.

But I digress, I am autistic. Articulating how I feel is not the easiest thing to do as it is way too much for me to explain thoroughly. This is not a problem that disappears when you get older (but I’ll save that for a later post). I spent the next several years focusing on becoming sharper at using my words and all for one reason > to beg for my life. My mom wanted to make sure I could thoroughly explain myself so my story was told properly because, well, who else can tell it better than me?

She told me to comply and plead, and I tried at every encounter I could. To comply and plead. That did not absolve me from being looked on as a man far too early while simultaneously being stripped of my manhood. I felt lied to. Not by the system and not by the police, because I expected it. I felt lied to by my mother. I TRIED it your way and it didn’t work.

So like I did when I learned to articulate, my autistic brain went hard at work trying to figure out why, the one woman who has never actually lied to me, told me the biggest one I’ve heard. “Just do everything to comply with the cops, that’s the best way to make sure you don’t end up another news story.”

Then it hit me, it’s because it’s the only advice she knew how to give. It’s what SHE was indoctrinated with. Then I realized that her parents too had to have been told the same things. So generations back you have whole communities who are being targeted and we are watching ourselves have our narratives be rewritten.

The first encounter that 9 year old BLACK boy gets with his first police officer while by himself usually isn’t with the cop bringing him ice cream or offering him a ride... well not to school anyway. No this child’s first encounter is usually being berated and handled as a danger. And it’s not just “a few bad cops picking on a few black kids”. It’s engrained in absolutely every part of our lives. In every institution we are forced into from birth reaffirms the worthlessness and danger of our very own existence. It’s our teachers, our social workers, and yes our police. All of the people who would swore to protect and serve have made it clear before we even hit our teenage years, they meant protect and serve AGAINST us. It makes us believe we can’t build with the people in our communities because all they do is tear down. So we grow up, not loving or trusting one another. We grow up thinking that my neighbor more than likely WILL attack but I can always keep my guard down around police. Guess which group I’ve been more personally victimized by?

And I am not the only POC that has this experience. This is our reality. I am a millennial and my little brothers and sisters are gen Z. We often talk about breaking generational curses, this is what we meant in our communities.

So you can yell at them to comply and submit all you want. You can scream and try and threaten them into “doing it your way”.

The same old tactics never make new results.