Do We Have a Problem?

I was in the store, just trying to find some candy that I may have wanted for the mini-movie night I had planned. I really didn’t have much else on my mind, and I was in deep thought about if I wanted Snickers or M&Ms. As I was doing that, from the side of my eye something caught my attention. It was a woman about to walk down the aisle, but quickly stopped and kept going straight. I still wasn’t thinking much of it, because of course we do this every day. There has been plenty of times that either I thought something was on an aisle and it wasn’t or too many people were on the aisle, and I would make an executive decision to go to another aisle and come back later. So, I continued with my candy, however, 2 seconds later, the same woman had turned her basket around and came down the very aisle I was at. I took a step back, so that she could pass in front of me. However, when she passed me, she scoffed, nearly jumped and quickly pulled her basket to the nearest wall as far from me as possible, and looked at me as if I was going to attack her or belittle her for walking down the aisle. She was an older Caucasian lady, and she made me feel like I was a monster, or something. That shocked me, considering everything that’s going on in the world, and we’re trying to come together as one to stop police brutality and racism, why would you do that? For a second, my spirit was broken, considering that no matter how hard we try we will be looked at a certain way. However, then I started to think about it, and realized Do they think we hate them?

Well, after that I went home, and it was still on my mind. I ended up telling a friend about it and in return he advised me to watch this lecture, and that’s what truly opened my eyes to just all of this including the incident in the store. The lecture is Dr. Joy DeGruy Leary’s, Post traumatic Slave syndrome, lecture on YouTube. Watching this made me angry, and some of the photos made me sick to my stomach. Having said that, the more I interpreted the lecture, the more things started to make sense about today. (I really suggest that people of all colors watch this lecture.) It answered questions about my own, and also answered questions about others. It basically shows the reasons why some people will act a certain way towards us, and it’s mainly because they’re scared of retaliation. Scared that we will decide to go back and do what they did to us during slavery. Now, I know people will say, “That’s not true. That doesn’t make sense that was years ago.” And there’s 2 responses. I have towards that.

One, A person walking around today may not even know that they’re in fear of retaliation because they may not even know the real reason they feel a certain way about a race, however, just like how we are taught from our parents how to talk and taught how to cook, we are taught how to see the world. Granted, some of us grow up and decide to take our own approach and change the way we look at things, but a lot of us still go with what our parents and grandparents have told us. And after generations and generations of being taught the same thing, with realizing it, it’s retaliation that fears some. I can’t say this for everyone, because not everyone parents thought and has this mind frame when it came to African Americans, but a lot of people did especially back then.

Two, It wasn’t as long ago as people like to preach. Let me put this into perspective. Lynching after slavery was from 1882-1968, according to the NAACP. There was apparently even a more recent report of the last lynching in 1981. Now, I’ll look at my own family members: My great grandmother (on my mom’s side) was born in 1939, my grandmother (on my dad side) was born in 1948, and lastly my grandmother (on my mom’s side) was born 1957. I didn’t include everyone since it would be a very long list. Now, considering that all of them were children and grew up to be adults during this time, and are still alive today – was it that long ago? That means we may still have people that lynched other black people walking around right now, having soup at a restaurant, as if nothing has ever happened. Think about it: Your own family members could’ve been one of the ones to do this, and your own family members could be someone that cried as they heard about someone they loved being lynched. You just never truly know, which makes it way more real and recent than we would like to admit.

Thinking about all of this made me come back to my original question: With everything going on, do they think we hate them? Or do we hate them? And the answer was quite simple.

No we don’t.

Nothing about what we are standing for has something to do with any one person, and we don’t truly hold any regret from the past. We want you to acknowledge that it happened and do better to stop it from your own community, instead of throwing it under a rock and saying ‘racism doesn’t exist’, but we don’t care to have revenge nor do we hate anyone for their skin tones. Our main reason for fighting is so we can wake up every morning and not have to worry about someone we love walking outside and being killed just because they look ‘aggressive’ or ‘threatening’ when in reality that’s not the case. We shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells just because we wake up. I shouldn’t have to call my mom and tell her that if anything happens to me, it’s because of this person in authority that’s supposed to bring peace. (Based on a true story that happened to me in college) I shouldn’t have to worry about finding out that someone that looks like me couldn’t breathe because someone was blocking their airways with their knee. Just shouldn’t have to happen. So, when we are outside protesting and fighting it’s not because we think every white person is bad, but it’s because we think that our lives shouldn’t be the ones taken away just because a person decides to end it, and they know they will not be fully punished for it. That’s what this movement Is about. Black Lives Matter is just saying that our lives matter too, and when we are killed, the people that killed us should be dealt with properly, and not just a 1-month suspension. I mean don’t you think it’s sad that an officer can kill a bear and be fully fired from their position and looked down upon, but someone killing a black person just gets suspension? Or get fired but still walks around like they did nothing wrong?